


Glass Devil, Iron Angel

by AsheRhyder



Category: Dragon Age - All Media Types, Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Alternate Universe - Angels, Alternate Universe - Devils, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Canon-Typical Violence, Deal with a Devil, F/M, Guardian Angels, M/M, Major Character Injury, Minor Character Death, Some of These Warnings Are Misleading
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-28
Updated: 2015-08-10
Packaged: 2018-04-11 16:37:05
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 15
Words: 23,519
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4443689
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AsheRhyder/pseuds/AsheRhyder
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>While Tevinter devils and Qunari angels wage war over the souls of mortals to establish a single force of Divine Order, something else rises out of ancient sins and ruins to cast everything into Chaos. The newborn Inquisition rises in power to defend the world, but what kind of Order will the Inquisitor make? </p><p>Otherwise known as: Selling your soul for fun and profit: How Evelyn Trevelyan put an angel on the payroll, made a deal with a devil, and had a really bad time courtesy of the Forces of Chaos, not necessarily in that order.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Krem and Felix

**0-A: Krem**  
  
    The Qun called him to the fight. All right, technically it was the sounds of battle and vicious cursing in Tevene peppering more Common Tongue slurs, but the Iron Bull attributed the simmering battle-hunger to the Qun anyway. Any chance to ruin the day of a Tevinter devil was a chance for a fantastic day. The honor and advancement of the Qun’s ineffable plan was just a bonus.  
  
    He charged into the fight like a landslide, like the swing of a blade meant to cut through the heaviest plate mail. The three soldiers standing over the one on the floor weren’t wearing heavy plate mail, and it wouldn’t have helped them much anyway against a Qunari angel of the guardian class. Only one of them was a proper devil, if the cracked and cloudy glass wings could really be enough to call him ‘proper’; the other two were common infantry, with nary a shard to their name.  
  
    The infantryman on the right was in the middle of an attack when the Iron Bull joined the fray, and the resulting collision was a mess of sparks and blood as the man’s flail skimmed the living metal over Bull’s shoulder and took out an eye. Iron Bull repaid him by letting his metal arch back into a razor-bladed wing and decapitating him.  
  
    The man on the floor sat up, shaking and coughing. The Bull caught a glimpse of curve wrapped in bindings, considered the pronouns, and put it to the back of his mind. Whatever. He’d ask later, once the soldiers were taken care of and he could get a proper answer.  
  
    The rest of the bar looked at them warily: Qunari metal versus Tevinter glass historically made for a very messy confrontation.  
  
    The Iron Bull slung the mace off his back and set it down in reach of the person he just saved, noticing the particular kind of glee that flickered in those watching eyes.  
  
    “You’ve got this now?” He asked, and was answered with a grin.  
  
    “Oh yeah. I got this, Chief.” Up went the hammer. Down went the other soldiers.  
  
  
    The Iron Bull ambled to the bar and slid a good amount of silver across the counter to the terrified barkeep.  
  
    “Gimme something strong enough that I don’t feel this anymore,” he said, pointing to his mangled eye, “and another one for my friend over there.”  
  
    The bartender glanced to the silver, and then to the Bull; metal on the table and metal folding down into patterns on grey skin.  
  
    Behind them, a Tevinter soldier went _squish_. Bull sighed and slid more silver across.  
  
    “Sorry about the mess. Get a nice rug or something.” Another sickening crunch, glass in flesh and then silence. “Maybe a big rug. And a new broom?”  
  
    Someone propped the handle of Bull’s mace by the counter.  
  
    “Thanks for that,” the survivor said.  
  
    “I’m the Iron Bull. What do you want to be called?”  
  
  
**0-B: Felix**  
  
    “No.”  
  
    “No, you can’t, or no, you won’t?”  
  
    “No, take your pick.”  
  
    “Dorian—”  
  
    “Don’t think you can take that tone with me, Felix of House Alexius! You’re the one asking—”  
  
    “I know very well what I’m asking.” Felix regarded his father’s student with the patience of a divine icon. Dorian resisted the urge to flip his mentor’s son’s cape over his head so he wouldn’t have to see that expression.  
  
    “If you know, then why do you ask me?” Dorian crossed his arms and tried to find some stance that looked less defensive.  
  
    “Because you’re the only one I can trust to do it right.”  
  
    “Your father will kill me,” Dorian muttered. “I don’t have the kind of power required to do that.”  
  
    “I’m not asking for a permanent solution,” Felix answered dry. “I’m asking for a few months where I don’t feel like my bones are going to rot out of my body and leave me as a useless jelly. I’m asking for a little more time to see this through.”  
  
    Dorian’s face crumpled in an artful balance of grief and determination.  
  
    “Are you certain? There must be another way. Your father—”  
  
    “My father is getting desperate. I don’t like the look of his research, or the people he’s been talking to. I don’t trust them. I trust _you_.”  
  
    Dorian sighed and unfolded his wings. Facets of fused quartz warped the image of the tapestry behind him and caught the luminance of the mage lights in the sconces.  
  
    “All right,” he said, holding out his hands. “Name your terms.”  
  
    Felix laughed.  
  
    “Truly, you _are_ terrible at this,” he said through his smile. “You’re the one brokering the contract; you’re supposed to offer the terms.”  
  
    Dorian bristled.  
  
    “I’m doing you a favor here,” he scowled. “Please recall that I don’t want this in the first place.”  
  
    “All right, all right.” Felix clasped his hands and stretched his own wings of dichroic glass. “I, Felix of House Alexius, Arbiter of the Spire, offer you my soul in exchange for a less painful end than the one I’m destined for. Let my power be your strength, let your hand shape the world and see my will done. Do you accept this offer?”  
  
    “I, Dorian of House Pavus, Intermediary of the Spire, accept this deal. Let this contract be inviolate.” Dorian’s eyes and wings flared with violet light, casting unhealthy shadows over Felix’s wan face. The spectrum of colors in Felix’s wings, which were cracked from the strain of resisting the Blight, dulled as magic flowed through him. Dorian twisted and reshaped what he could, but the sickness was in his friend’s glass, and there was only so much he could do. The fractures, at least, fused back together, but left behind ugly, desaturated scars in the middle of the vibrant colors.  
  
    They broke apart as the contract finalized, Felix looking healthier for it and Dorian holding a small amulet that sparkled with color and power.  
  
    Felix clasped Dorian on the shoulder.  
  
    “Thank you,” he said.  
  
    Dorian’s fingers closed over the glass.  
  
    “Well. Don’t thank me yet.”    
  



	2. Bad Omens and Good Portents

    Evelyn Trevelyan was in the middle of a very bad day. The bad day sat firmly in the middle of what was shaping up to be a bad week, in a bad month, in a bad year. At the rate things were going, it was going to be a bad life. Were she not burdened with an inconvenient sense of responsibility and moral fortitude, she would have written the whole thing off and crawled into bed to sleep through the rest of the Age.   
  
    Unfortunately, the state of the world was such that, being able, she had to go save the damn thing.   
  
    Somedays it really didn’t pay to crawl out of the void.   
  
    To the north, Tevinter devils waged constant and costly war with Qunari angels for divine supremacy in the realms of Order. To the west, the Orlesian triumvirate fell apart for the first time in four centuries and plunged the Empire into civil war. To the east, a civil rights movement sparked a militant religious reformation and strained the regency’s already splintered power base. To the south… well, any further south and it was too damn cold to deal with anyone’s nonsense. All over, the roaming Dalish clans wandered across and ignored territory lines, disdaining humans even as they alternately made attempts to be helpful or start wars of their own. All under, the dwarves— actually, right now the dwarves were the only people not giving Evelyn grief, so they were temporarily her favorite.   
  
    In the middle of all of this was Evelyn, having the another epically bad day. Since her previous bad days included a holy site collapsing on her head, being blamed and arrested for said holy site’s destruction, being made into a figurehead and spokesperson for the organization that did the arresting, and having all of her potential allies fall out in a horrifically public display, she was not looking forward to seeing how this one would take a turn for the worse.   
  
  
    It was raining on the Storm Coast, and Evelyn had to meet some mercenary that was willing to lend a hand to the woefully underpowered forces attempting to hold some kind of order in the crumbling world. Her only assistance in this task came from one of her former jailers and two tagalongs, neither of whom seemed to be in particularly useful positions with the rest of their people.   
  
    It wasn’t that Evelyn minded Varric and Solas’ company. Varric, at least, was friendly and jovial. His stories were sometimes the only highlight of her day. Solas started off friendly enough, but as more and more of the world players settled into their own crises and ignored the bigger picture, his tongue became sharper and more unforgiving. Evelyn didn’t blame him for _that_ ; her opinion of politicking made her more than a little caustic too, but when he turned that attitude back on her… well.   
  
    Just because the three leaders of the so-called Inquisition were turning to her to break their three-way ties, it didn’t make her some kind of authority figure. It certainly didn’t mean she had to listen to Solas’ increasingly accusatory commentary for hours on end.  
  
    “I really don’t think you’re taking this as seriously as it’s due,” Solas said, and Evelyn sighed as she squished onwards. Fantastic. Now she had wet socks on top of everything else.   
  
    “I’m sorry, Solas, but my memory has more holes than fancy cheese, I’ve barely had two minutes to myself since this whole mess began, and Commander Cullen spent an hour explaining to me in very explicit detail exactly how thin his forces are already stretched.” She groaned. “I’d love to give this whole ‘divine hand-date’ thing the attention you think it deserves—”   
  
    “Divine _Mandate_ ,” Solas corrected, more than a shade reproachfully. “The Authority to establish Order over all the realms. Whosoever wields the mark of the Divine Mandate is the one who proclaims the will of the heavens.”   
  
    “Did you seriously just use the word ‘whosoever’ in a real sentence?” Varric grinned, and Solas tensed. “I thought that only showed up in epics.”   
  
    “I was quoting,” replied Solas testily.   
  
    “You know though, the thing about epics is that they’re all a little embellished. I mean, if someone was going to turn this into an epic for the ages, they sure wouldn’t write about our rain-soaked slog down to the sea.”   
  
    “The Divine Mandate figures prominently in both the age of the Titans and the age of the Gods—”     
  
    “Look, you guys,” interrupted Evelyn, “it’s a painful, glow-y tattoo that I didn’t ask for. Maybe it’s a holy thing, maybe it’s not, I don’t know. I’m not good with holy stuff. The last time I went to a holy place, it fell down on my head. Holy and I are incompatible!”   
  
    “And yet, you bear the Mark,” said Solas, and she tried not to scream. “If you will not lead, then Order will fall to Chaos.”   
  
    “Who even makes this stuff up?” She whimpered, looking to Cassandra for an answer. The other woman’s mouth thinned to a severe line, and Evelyn reminded herself not to antagonize her former jailer with her antipathy towards organized religion.   
  
  
    The sounds of distant combat reached their ears, and instantly Evelyn’s entire demeanor changed.   
  
    “Hold up, gang. We’ve got incoming.”   
  
    “Two or more groups of mercenaries,” said Cassandra from the front. “I believe at least one of them is the mercenary who sent for you.”   
  
    “How can you tell?” Evelyn popped up next to her and followed her gaze down to the massive figure with horns. “Ah. Fair enough.”   
  
    Even more impressive than the horns, however, was the living metal that scythed through the air around him as his iron wings folded and unfurled. The metal of a Qunari angel’s wings could be both armor and weapon as the situation required, and the one in the middle of the battlefield looked like he had mastered both applications with aplomb.   
  
    “I was not expecting this,” Evelyn said.   
  
    A few bandits took notice of their party’s approach and charged towards them with an unnecessary battle cry.   
  
    “I’m going to take a wild guess and say that these are the bad guys,” Varric sighed. Cassandra answered with a disgruntled noise as she and Evelyn raised their shields and cut off the path.   
  
  
    It wasn’t, in all fairness, much of a fight. By the time Evelyn and her team took out the group that attacked them, one of the mercenary troops was completely wiped out and the other looked ready to start a beach party.   
  
  
    Evelyn picked her way across the shore and felt more at ease once she saw the handsome lieutenant who delivered the Iron Bull’s invitation. Krem waved to her and toasted with a drink, then pointed to the Qunari angel seated by some driftwood. Evelyn nodded back and headed over, doing her best to size up the admittedly giant figure.   
  
    In rest, the living metal of the angel’s wings rearranged itself into a complicated pattern atop his grey skin that looked like a tattoo. It was deceptively decorative; living metal was still as strong as the inert kind that made more mundane armor, and could easily deflect a blade while it made pretty pictures.   
  
    Evelyn tried not to stare, failed, and then gave in with gusto.   
  
    “Funny thing about the wings,” said the angel with a smirk that told her that her wandering eyes had been noticed, “is that you gotta remember to switch up your patterns to not give anyone a chance to find a weak spot.  
  
    “And yeah,” he winked, as well as someone could with only one eye, “it goes all the way down.”   
      
  
    Evelyn cleared her throat.   
  
    “What’s a Qunari angel doing leading a mercenary troop?” she asked.   
  
    “A damn fine job of it,” he answered, smirk widening into a grin. “What’s a human doing with the Divine Mandate?”   
  
    “Trying to figure out how she got it and who dropped a holy city on her head in the process,” she sighed. “Sorry. It’s been a rough time. I take it you’re the Iron Bull?”   
  
    “Yeah, the horns usually give it away.” He tilted his head, showing off. “So. You’ve seen what we can do. The Chargers are expensive, but we’re worth it.”  
  
    “How expensive?”   
  
    “It won’t cost _you_ anything; we’ll talk to the Inquisition ambassador and get payments sorted out. Gold sort of takes care of itself in the kind of set-up you’re building. If you want to buy drinks, that’s good, too.” The Iron Bull shrugged, and a few of the metal patterns on his chest rippled into new shapes. “You hire us, _you_ get the bonus, though.”   
  
    “The bonus?” She raised an eyebrow.   
  
    “The Inquisition’s sending you out on the frontline jobs. You need a good strong-arm with you — so you’ll get _me_.”   
  
    Evelyn’s jaw dropped a little at the thought of a Qunari angel working as her bodyguard.  
  
    “No job too big — demons, dragons, you name it.” He stood up, taking a step away from the merriment behind them. “There’s another thing. Could be useful. Could piss you off.”   
  
    “Is it about the Divine Hand-ate?” She held up her hand and wiggled her fingers. He chuckled and nodded.   
  
    “Have you heard of the Ben Hassrath?”   
  
    “Only a little. Aren’t they the guardians of the Qun? Watching over the faithful?”   
  
    “Watching is definitely a part of it,” he shrugged again, sleek grey metal shifting up his neck and down his collarbone. “They’re less like soldiers and more like spies. Well. _We’re_ more like spies.”   
  
    She drew in a long, slow breath.   
  
    “Should you be telling me that?” She asked quietly.   
  
    “You’d find out eventually. It’s called ‘The Inquisition’, after all. Better you hear it from me and get it out of the way now.” He said. “The Qun heard about the mess down here; it’s a little concerned. Told me to get in cozy, find out what’s going on with this Inquisition thing that you’ve got here to deal with it. You hire the Chargers and I go with you; they’ll hear what I see. But there are other agents down here, and they send reports too. Bring us on, and I’ll share those with you.”   
  
    “Information sharing?” Evelyn pursed her lips. “That’s what all this is about?”   
  
    The Iron Bull chuckled.   
  
    “I won’t tell you the Qun’s not interested in getting you to convert, but I’m not the one to convince you.”   
  
    “It always comes back to the stupid Hand-ate.” She glanced at her palm and the soft glow of the Mark.   
  
    “Like I said, not my thing.” The Bull shook his head. “Right now the concern is cleaning up that mess in the sky. So. What do you think?”   
  
    She looked at the Qunari angel and watched the patterns across his torso in their gentle, constant flux; strong and steady. For the first time in ages, she felt maybe, just maybe, they might all get out of this mess.   
  
    “You’re hired.”   
  



	3. First Impressions, Second Choices, and Three Times in Antiva...

    The meeting with the mages did not go well, to put it mildly. The potential allies that the Inquisition sent Evelyn to recruit were snatched out from under her nose by a Tevinter devil, their souls literally sold to save their lives.   
  
    She wanted, at the time, to punch the brokering devil in his smug face, but that wouldn’t actually help anyone. Her restraint was rewarded with a note dropped in her lap by the sickly looking young man at the devil’s side.   
      
     _You’re in terrible danger,_ the note read. _Come to the Chantry tonight._   
  
    “Well, that’s not suspicious at all,” Varric said.   
  
    “Why bother with a note?” Evelyn asked. “We were just there with him. He could have started a fight at any time.”   
  
    “A fight, yeah, but people will remember a fight, and people will talk. Martyrdom isn’t good for conscripted morale. Devils prefer to use the other tools at their disposal.” The Iron Bull grunted.   
  
    “Yeah, well.” She flexed her hand, and the mark of the Mandate flared. “I’ve got other tools, too.”   
  
      
    There was a commotion in the Chantry as they approached that night.   
  
    “Just once, I’d like to go somewhere _without_ walking into someone else’s fight.” Evelyn groaned and gestured for the Bull to kick open the door.   
  
    There were monsters inside, the same twisted and savage creatures that crawled out of the wreckage of the lost temple. The brands on their bodies were the reverse of the mark on Evelyn’s hand, but to whom it bound them and for what purpose had yet to be seen. Three of them lay motionless on the floor, and two others attacked a man in white who fought back with a staff. The seemingly simple weapon spun in his hands as he bashed one foe’s head in and smashed the other with a whip-around strike.   
  
    The man turned as the monsters fell.   
  
    “Oh good, you’re here. Now give me a hand and banish these, will you?” He straightened up as Evelyn stepped forward and gestured with her hand — light flared from the both the mark and the brands, and the monsters faded away. “Amazing. How does it work? You don’t know, do you? Just wiggle your fingers, and — poof!”   
  
    “Careful, boss,” said the Iron Bull in a tone that sounded like a smile but didn’t show on his face. “The pretty ones are always the worst.”   
  
    At the sound of the Bull’s voice, the man went rigid, expression freezing on his face as if it had been sculpted there.   
  
    “Ah. I see that the Infernal Device has got its claws in you,” he said.   
  
    “Actually, he’s here for the paycheck,” Evelyn jerked her thumb towards the Bull. “I don’t have time for any of that ‘divine’ nonsense.”   
      
    “Really?” Curiosity melted through the man’s icy wall. “Even with the Divine Mandate on your hand?”   
  
    “Ugh,” Evelyn groaned. “Not you, too.”   
  
    “He’s a devil, boss.” The Bull rumbled. “It’s kind of a given.”   
  
    Varric’s crossbow clicked ominously. The man raised his hands in surrender.   
  
    “Now, now, there’s no need for that. I’m here to help. Also, to look dashing, which is significantly less difficult.” Under their watchful eyes, he eased the staff to the floor and nudged it out of easy reach. “Allow me to introduce myself: Dorian of House Pavus, Intermediary of the Spire. How do you do?”   
      
    As he rose from his bow, something rippled around his back, subtly distorting the room behind him. Living glass stretched towards the high Chantry ceiling, sculpted into beautifully detailed wings with elegant, perfectly clear feathers.   
  
    Evelyn stared. This time she didn’t even bother to try and hide it; the wings were absolutely huge.   
  
    “Where were you even keeping those?” She gaped.   
  
    “Inside,” Dorian replied with an amused quirk of the lips. “I didn’t want to make a bad first impression, but, well. You’ve seen how well that went.” He sighed, and the great glass wings folded to a resting position against his spine.   
  
    “You want to make a good first impression, stop arranging your introductions to look like a very obvious set-up,” snorted the Iron Bull.   
  
    Dorian immediately bristled, transparent feathers fanning out again with his annoyance.   
  
    “I’m working with what I have,” snapped Dorian. “Which, given the circumstances, isn’t much. We can’t all go around collecting minions like lost ducklings; and speaking of, how _are_ the Chargers? Made proper converts of them yet? Shoved any souls into the Infernal Device—”   
      
    “Wait a minute!” Evelyn demanded. “You two know each other?”   
  
    “We’ve crossed paths a few times. Ruined covenants. Foiled plots. You know. Thwarting.” Dorian shrugged, but the casual ease of his shoulders didn’t quite reach his face.   
  
    “Is that what you want to call it?” The Iron Bull crossed his arms and smirked. “‘Cause I distinctly remember that encounter in that Antivan port—”   
  
    “Yes, yes, all right, we’re quite familiar—” Dorian hurried to try and speak over him, but there was simply no talking over the Iron Bull.   
  
    “—Three times in one night! And here I always thought glass was _fragile_.”   
  
    Dorian’s bronze face went distinctly crimson, and flickers of some strange light just shy of a shade of violet flashed through his plumage.   
  
    “They get the picture!” The devil bit out hotly.   
  
    “Oh, we get the picture, all right.” Varric snickered, his own grin bordering on a leer. “Hell, you could make good coin off that picture.”   
  
    Dorian rolled his eyes, and Evelyn cleared her throat.   
  
    “You said you wanted to help?” When he nodded, she gestured between him and the Bull. “Is this going to be a problem?”   
  
    “Nah,” said the Bull before Dorian could even open his mouth. “He’s a real sweetheart.” The devil huffed, glass feathers fluffing up again in agitation. He shifted so that was all but turned away from the Iron Bull, focused on Evelyn entirely.   
  
    “The devil who made a contract with your mages was once my Mentor. His name is Alexius, and believe it or not, he used to be a decent fellow.”   
  
    “I’m finding that a little hard to believe.” Evelyn said. “I mean, I’m sorry, but we didn’t have a sparkling introduction there.”   
  
    “Fair enough, Dorian sighed. “Long story short, he’s fallen into the company of some Red Contract cultists called the Venatori, following someone they call ‘the Elder One’, and they’re trying to get to you to recover the Divine Mandate.”   
  
    Evelyn groaned.   
  
    “Always, back to the damn hand thing.” She glared at the offending mark. “So who the hell is this ‘Elder One’? And what’s a Red Contract?”  
  
    “I’ve never met their leader; I’m not one of their number. Red Contracts are—” Dorian paused. “Wait, before I start, what is it you think we devils _do_?”   
  
    “Make us sign over our souls and then cackle madly on a throne of skulls?” Evelyn winced even as she said it. “Sorry. I’ve only met the two now, and the other guy unhelpfully set a really bad example.”   
  
    “And what do you think a soul is?” Dorian raised an eyebrow, and she was suddenly reminded of her old tutors, asking for the assignments she skipped in favor of more sword practice.   
  
    “Umm…” she said, very articulately. The devil rolled his eyes in what was probably the least devil-like look of exasperation she could imagine.   
  
    “What in the world do they teach you down here? ‘Don’t sell your soul, we’re not telling you what it is or how you’ll know if it’s gone, but don’t sell it.’ Sacred glass, I would have thought _you_ at least would have informed her.” He whirled on the Bull, who shrugged gamely.   
  
    “Like I said, conversion isn’t my gig,” said the Bull. “Besides, you’re hot when you get all didactic and long-winded.”   
  
    Dorian fumed and turned back towards Evelyn, pinching the bridge of his nose as if staving off a headache.   
      
    “All right, quick lesson for the sake of informed consent. If I were to make a contract with you, which I would like to do for reasons I will explain momentarily, please stop pointing that crossbow at me, I could either make a fair and balanced contract where both parties mutually benefit — a Black Contract — or I could, won’t but could, cheat, use loop holes, fine print, or otherwise make an unbalanced deal to your detriment — that’s a Red Contract.  
    “Ideally, a devil wants to have a good enough reputation that people are willing to make contracts with us. Red Contracts are bad business, and sometimes people don’t have any other options. I deal strictly in Black Contracts - my clients get the boons they need, and I get to transmute power of their soul into pure magic.” He held up an ornament hanging around his neck — multi-colored glass that sparkled, cut and faceted like a star. “Before you ask: no, it doesn’t hurt, and no, you don’t have to sell the whole thing or make a permanent contract. A soul is not an easily depleted resource.”   
  
    “And yet, you guys keep going after more,” the Iron Bull mused, and Dorian shot him a glare.   
  
    “You’re one to talk!” He sniped back. “Don’t listen to him, my dear. As he said, he’s not in conversions. What does the a cog in the Device know about the power output?” Dorian cupped the amulet carefully, and the expression on his face was almost tender. “It’s not a _thing_ you _have,_ or even a thing you _are_. It’s what you _do_. It’s the lives you affect with every action or word, rippling out from your first breath until the last trace of your name is silent and every last thing you’ve touched turns to dust.”   
  
    Solas cleared his throat.   
  
    “Historically, the ones who held the Divine Mandate built their versions of Order around ways of incorporating the soul into more tangible forms of power. Titans built it into their relics, and the Gods wove it into their spells. Tevinter devils and Qunari angels are merely the latest to seek the Mandate to establish their soul-powered systems as Truth.”   
  
    Both the Iron Bull and Dorian gave Solas sharp, considering looks.   
  
    “Oh really?” drawled Dorian. “We never would have guessed.”   
  
    “Considering neither of your peoples have actually managed to convert or contract her, I wasn’t sure you did,” replied Solas, just as dryly.   
  
    “I did say I would like to make a contract,” Dorian flinched as Varric’s bow shifted. “Will you stop that?”   
  
    “I’m really not sure there’s anything you can offer me that will make me want to sell my soul,” Evelyn shook her head and suppressed a smirk at the pouty frustration that overtook the devil.   
  
    “I don’t actually want it. No offense, it’s a perfectly lovely soul, I’m sure, but please understand that by Tevinter standards, it’s almost completely unmarketable except to a select, quite insane few.”   
  
    “Unmarketable?” She repeated incredulously. “But you just said you wanted to make a contract!”   
  
    “Yes, because while in the contract, I can tap and channel a little of your soul’s power to fuel my spells, which I can use to help you. The whole thing at once— You’re on the path of a world-savior. If you succeed, there would hardly be a person or place in the next thousand years that would not be touched by the echoes of your actions! It would be impossible for any one devil to hold onto all that power; the only option would be to use it immediately and hope they don’t shatter in the process. And that’s ‘remake the world in your own image’ levels, here.”   
  
    “And that’s not appealing to you at all?” Evelyn raised an eyebrow and pinned him with her most dissecting stare, but Dorian just held up his hands again.   
  
    “As I said, a select class of madmen. No, I’m not among their number. I know we devils have a bad reputation regarding our ‘power-hunger’, but we are not all cackling lunatics bent on world domination. Some of us are actually quite dedicated to establishing a sustainable Order for the world. It’s my duty to help you stop Chaos.” He started to offer his hand, glanced at Varric’s unerring aim, and thought better of it. “I offer my help either way. I can simply offer you a great deal _more_ assistance if we make a contract.”   
  
    Evelyn rubbed at her temples like it could actually help against the nascent headache the situation created. She turned to the rest of the party.   
  
    “Opinions?”   
  
    “Don’t you have enough holy-rollers after your hand?” Varric asked.   
  
    “A devil’s word is as good as their bond,” Solas said contemplatively. “If you can get the right word, you could net yourself a powerful ally.”   
  
    The Iron Bull just shrugged.   
  
    “I thought for sure _you’d_ have an opinion.” Evelyn stared at him. Behind her, Dorian snorted.   
  
    “Take him or leave him, Boss,” said the Bull. “It’s your soul, not mine. I already told you I’m not in for conversions.”   
  
    Evelyn glanced back at Dorian, who was distracted making faces at the Bull.   
  
    “Is he any good?” She asked, causing the Bull to laugh out loud as Dorian sputtered in protest.   
  
    “Pretty good,” the Bull said between his guffaws. “Better with his actual spells than at making deals. You don’t have to worry about him cheating you out of your soul.”   
  
    Dorian glared and very pointedly moved so that he could face Evelyn and not see the Iron Bull at all.   
  
    “I’ll help you stop Alexius, and then you can decide,” he said.   
  
    “Bit of a free sample, huh?” Evelyn smiled, despite her caution, feeling warmed by the earnestness the devil displayed. “I didn’t think devils did that.”   
  
    “Well, he’s not a very good devil,” interjected the Iron Bull.   
  
    “Excuse you!” Dorian exclaimed, hands on his hips and wings fluttering. “I am an exquisite devil! Don’t listen to him, my dear. I’ll show you just how helpful a devil at your shoulder can be.”   
  



	4. Sympathy for the Devil

    It happened in an instant. Before, everything was going as planned — the Inquisition agents snuck in and neatly killed the Red Agents serving Alexius, immediately tipping the odds in Evelyn’s favor as she stepped up to deal with the devil himself. Alexius ranted, something quite nearly trite for as cliche as it sounded, and the cloudy glass amulet he wore began to glow. Evelyn raised her shield, and in that instant Dorian was beside her, his massive wings arched around her and lit from inside as if by lightning.   
  
    There was a flash, a deep, sick, sea-green flash, and then they were both gone.   
  
    Silence reigned, enthroned on the empty space where they once stood.   
  
    Alexius let out a strangled laugh, more than half-mad and tinted with grief. Behind him, the young devil who first drew them into Dorian’s company gasped and bowed his head. The Inquisition forces hesitated — their leader was gone, but what opposition remained was an unquantifiable entity they weren’t sure they could take anymore. The remaining members of Evelyn’s party, the Iron Bull and a sharp-tongued elf girl called Sera, exchanged uneasy glances.   
  
    “What the frig was that?” she hissed, lips curled back in distaste.   
  
    “Dunno,” the Bull murmured back. “Never seen anything like it. Every devil I’ve ever killed shatters. Never seen ‘em just… disappear.”  
  
    “There goes your last hope,” Alexius crowed, but it was a broken sort of bluster, almost as much to himself as it was to them. He started to turn towards the other devil, the one whose dichroic glass wings seemed to bloom with desaturated spiderweb fractures, but there was another flash of light. This one was a soul-searing shade of violet almost beyond visibility, and it hung in the air like a wound in space and time.   
  
    Evelyn stepped through it, face haunted but grimly set, shield stained with dried blood and glass dust. Dorian followed not a moment later, transparent wings held tightly behind him and the pendant around his neck glowing like a star.   
  
    “Felix!” He roared, and the younger devil’s head snapped up. Defiance burned in his eyes like life itself. His wings arched, and his glass cracked in the violence of the movement. He held out his hand as some shards rained down like a broken rainbow. Dorian tore his pendant from his neck and threw it to him; Felix caught it, and for one instant his wings were whole, shining and bright.   
  
    “Gereon of House Alexius,” Felix said, drawing his father’s awe and despair simultaneously, “by the power vested in me, I declare your contract void!” The amulet that the older devil carried exploded into dust, and his wings drooped and lost their sick luster.   
  
    Felix’s wings, however, shattered.   
  
    Gereon cried out, a terrible sound of loss and pain that ripped its way out of his throat from far deeper inside, but Evelyn hit him solidly with her shield and knocked him to the ground. It was Dorian who rushed forward and caught Felix as he fell to the ground, limbs breaking apart under his own weight. There was no time for words. Felix managed one bright, brittle smile before he was gone. Dorian bent over the remaining slivers silently with eyes shining from unshed tears.   
  
    Silence reclaimed its throne until confusion ended its monarchy with indignant revolution.   
  
    “Seriously, what the frig was that?” Sera demanded, louder this time. Dorian let out a shuddering sigh, and Evelyn dropped her hand to his bare shoulder, just above the smooth glass of his left wing joint.   
  
    “Felix is — _was_ — an Arbiter.” Dorian had to correct himself, and his voice caught when he did. “They’re supposed to oversee contracts, but — he wasn’t _well_ , and Arbitration is neither easy nor kind to those who take it on, and he couldn’t… couldn’t—”  
  
    “I meant with the disappearing act,” Sera interrupted bluntly, but not entirely unkindly.   
  
    “Ah.” Dorian glanced over to the unconscious devil that remained. “Alexius tried to alter the past. I intervened, and we went forward instead. Rather unpleasant; I’d much prefer to only have to debrief the once, if it’s all the same to you, so could we save this for another time?”   
  
    “Of course,” said Evelyn. Her tone was adamant, and gratefulness blossomed in Dorian’s face to hear it. “I’d really like to get back to Haven myself.”   
  
    The two exchanged a look of shared understanding.   
  
    “When you’re ready,” she said cautiously, “I’d like to discuss a contract.”   
  
    “What, really?” Sera interjected. “After all the crap we just saw with devils and all their shit?”   
  
    Evelyn stared at her, eyes troubled and focused just slightly off to the side in an unnerving fashion.   
  
    “Especially after what I just saw,” she said. She gave herself a little shake and hooked her arm around Sera’s elbow as she made her way to the door. “Come on. We’re going to find a drink or seven.”  
  
    Most of the other Inquisition forces shuffled after her in various states of shock, confusion, or concern. The Iron Bull stayed behind, a massive sentinel standing watch over the grieving Tevinter and the dusty remains of his lost friend.   
  
    After a while Dorian picked himself up and brushed down his robes. His wings fluttered once, twice, and then folded in, disappearing completely. Without their dazzling refractions behind him, he looked like an ordinary human; handsome, but not necessarily the first thing to come to mind at the stories of soul-brokering devils.   
  
    “Well, let’s not keep everyone waiting,” he sighed.   
  
    “So you’re sticking around, then?”  
  
    “I said I was going to help, and I meant it.” There was an edge buried in Dorian’s tone, somewhere under the exhaustion and sorrow.   
  
    “Just because Boss said she’d make a contract with you doesn’t mean you have to stay.”   
  
    Dorian shot him a glare that practically tingled like lightning across his skin.   
  
    “I intend to see this through, contract or no,” he snapped. “I’ll remind you that I said as much when I met her. _You_ never giving me a reason to stay doesn’t make me incapable of committing to a cause.”   
  
    “Didn’t say you were,” replied the Bull, which seemed to bank the burn of the devil’s ire. “I meant you’re not obligated. No one would fault you for counting whatever it was you guys did as ‘seeing it through’.”   
  
    Dorian raised an imperious eyebrow and somehow managed to give the impression of staring down his aristocratic nose, despite being a full head shorter than the Iron Bull.   
  
    “You have no idea what we saw.”   
  
    “I know it rattled the boss,” said the Bull, “and I know you’re not too happy about what happened to that other devil.”   
  
    “Then you can extrapolate for yourself that we’re damn well going to fix this so nothing like it happens again,” Dorian retorted hotly.   
  
    “Suit yourself,” replied Bull, gesturing for him to leave first.   
  
    “I always do.”   
  
  
    Later, once Evelyn sobered up and Dorian took the edge off his own nerves with terrible Fereldan ale, they sat down to discuss their contract.   
  
    “I’d like to arrange a double-forfeit,” said Dorian, using his wings to prop himself up in recline.   
  
    “What does that mean?” Evelyn blinked and turned to Solas.   
  
    “Why are you asking him when you have an actual devil right here?” Dorian protested before the elf could say anything.   
  
    “‘Cause he explains everything to me.” Evelyn shrugged. “It’s his official Inquisition job.” Solas looked caught between amusement and annoyance, with the latter winning out, but only just.   
  
    “Elven magic does not trade power the way devils do,” he said, “but by his terminology, I could deduce that he means both parties offer collateral.”   
  
    “Anyone who commands the kind of power to count Alexius among their minions is going to be trouble,” said Dorian. “The kind of trouble that requires more power than a basic contract could give. With both our souls in the contract as collateral, it doubles the amount of power I’ll have to draw on in assisting you.”   
      
    “That sounds good, but is it?” She glanced to Solas, half teasing by the smirk that pulled at her lips when Dorian sputtered a protest.   
  
    “I suppose it depends on the terms of the contract,” answered Solas evenly, his own stare focused on the devil. Dorian rolled his eyes and held out his hands, palms up.   
  
    “Here are the terms that I, Dorian of House Pavus, Intermediary of the Spire, lay before you, Evelyn Trevelyan: You wish for my aid in protecting and saving the world from the Elder One, who leads the Chaos Covenant we saw in the future. To fulfill your wish, I offer you part of my glass, that my aid will always be at your fingertips. My price is that you _stop_ the Elder One. Should you fail, I will lay claim to your soul and all its power. Should I fail to fulfill your wish, you will lay claim to my soul. Do you accept these terms?”   
  
    “I don’t want your soul,” Evelyn hissed. “What would I even do with it?”   
  
    “Sell it to my father for whatever blood price he’s put on it?” Dorian muttered with a scowl. “I don’t want yours either, but souls offer the most leverage in arcane contracts. As long as neither of us bungles this ‘saving the world’ thing, we’ll be fine. Do you want a powerful contract or not? I don’t see how I can make this any more fair. If either of you can, do let me know. It’s not exactly comfortable to try and hold _potential_ power.”   
  
    Evelyn hesitated, but only for the span of a heartbeat before she put her hands overtop his. She didn’t even glance at Solas. It was testament to bond forged by the ordeal they shared that she didn’t flinch when he suddenly grabbed her hands.   
  
    “I accept these terms,” she said as seriously as she could.   
  
    Light flared through Dorian’s wings, spirit-purple and as brief as it was brilliant.   
  
    “Then let this contract be inviolate,” Dorian said, and energy buzzed through their clasped hands, tingling all the way to Evelyn’s core. She gasped, and he grinned.   
  
    When the light finally faded and the buzzing subsided, Evelyn stared down at the glass amulet lying between their hands. It was remarkably detailed for something small enough to fit in her palm, and it was shaped like a hand with the Divine Mandate emblazoned in the middle, every ray of implied light meticulously carved. The glass itself was clear with swirls of green and gold shot through, no bubbles or cracks to be seen.   
  
    “Is that my soul?” she asked, and Dorian chuckled at the obvious dismay that colored her tone.   
  
    “That’s our contract,” he said. “I told you, the soul is not a _thing_ I can take from you. This is just the manifestation of our arrangement. Much more convenient than the paper sort: waterproof, for one thing.” He arched his wings around and spread the cut-glass feathers. “Now, which would you like? Primary? Secondary? I’d advise against the down; they look fluffy, but they are still glass, and not nearly as soft as they seem.”   
  
    “You intend to give her a feather?” Solas raised an eyebrow.   
  
    “Why is it that no one listens when I say things?” The devil asked no one in particular. “I have a perfectly pleasant voice; perhaps you’re all merely distracted by it and don’t pay attention to the words that come out of my mouth. I did state that in the terms of the contract.”   
  
    “You said ‘part of your glass’, not that you were giving her _already shaped_ glass.”   
  
    “Is that significant?” Evelyn’s expression turned wary, and she leaned towards Dorian.   
  
    “In a complicated arcane way, yes, but as you’re not a mage, it’s not really a concern. Let’s just sum it up as it makes it easier for you to get to me, shall we?”   
  
    “Is that safe? For you, I mean.”   
  
    Dorian waved his hand dismissively.   
      
    “I’m rather fond of you, Evelyn Trevelyan, but I’m not giving you the glass of my heart.” He said. “A feather is far less risky. With a feather, you can call on me at anytime. You can even summon me to your side if you need to, though I’d prefer if you asked for my company in a more traditional way when convenient.”   
  
    Evelyn’s mouth thinned to a stony line.   
  
    “Oh, don’t give me that look,” he sighed. “Yes, it does separate me from a part of my power, but it’s nearly inconsequential compared to what I get from the contract, and _you_ certainly can’t use my glass to hurt me. Now pick one.”   
  
    He arched his wings again. She pointed to a discrete covert feather, and he gripped it tightly and plucked it with a wince. It was small enough that she could wear it around her neck like a pendant, and she clutched it gently.   
  
    “So that’s it?” she asked. “I made a contract with a devil?”   
  
    “Better save the world now,” Dorian said with a smile. “I don’t want to see what happens if I have to collect on your soul. For one thing, I think the Commander would have some serious complaints.”   
  



	5. Friction and Other Forms of Progress

    The Inquisition grew. Evelyn’s forays across the realms spread its influence, displaying the strength that fueled it as it solidified its power base. At her side throughout all of those escapades were Dorian and the Iron Bull; the presence of a Tevinter devil and a Qunari angel, working together under her banner of Order, gave pause to even the most stalwart opposition.   
  
    And that was fantastic. When they actually managed to work together.   
    The rest of the time...  
  
    “By the great glass buttresses of the Central Spire, are you trying to blind me?” Dorian stopped dead in his tracks as he walked into the courtyard to join the Iron Bull and Varric on another of Evelyn’s sorties. “Is this some new kind of special attack? Terrible circus tent pants?”   
  
    The Iron Bull gave a philosophic shrug.   
  
    “Well, you took all the rigging for that funny dress of yours, so I figured ‘waste not, want not’.”   
  
    “It’s not a dress, it’s a robe. Though if it were, I’d still have better taste in attire than you.”   
  
    “Call it whatever you like, just don’t trip on the hems while we’re coming down the path. I’m not catching you.”   
  
    “Funny, that’s not what you said in Carastes.”   
  
       _and_ ,  
  
    “So tell me, how many ducklings are you up to now? Seven? Eight?”   
  
    “They’re not ducklings.”   
  
    “Cygnets, then? That one with the knives certainly seems vicious enough to be a swan at heart.”   
  
    “Not. Ducklings.”   
  
    “Touched a bit of a nerve there, have I? What’s the matter? Are domesticated animal metaphors too close to the comparison to sheep? Or does the Qun have a preferred livestock for its sacrifices?”   
  
    “I just give them the tools to save themselves.”   
  
    “Right, because your boss is so delightfully fond of personal initiative. Oh wait.”   
  
    “And what’s personal initiative done for you lately? Or your friend with the pretty wings?”   
  
    “… That was a low blow.”   
  
    “Don’t start on my Chargers if you’re not ready to own up to your own responsibilities.”   
  
    “Are they?” Dorian stopped in the middle of the path and gave the Bull an excruciatingly shrewd look.   
  
    “Mine? Yeah.” The Bull replied. “As long as they stay, they’re mine.”   
  
    “The last time, they were ‘the’ Chargers.”   
  
    “And now they’re mine.”   
  
    “Oh.”   
  
          _and_ ,  
  
    “Hey, do you remember that place in Minrathous—”   
  
    “With the cracked bell outside?”   
  
    “Yeah, and that little stand on the corner of the street that sold those crispy things you liked so much—”   
  
    “I swear that I will set you on fire if you give me a craving for food I cannot find this far south.”   
  
    “We crossed paths just as the sun was setting, and you were wearing that gauzy thing with the scarves that brought out your eyes?”   
  
    “...yes?”   
  
    “And you did that thing with your tongue after two glasses of Antivan brandy…”  
  
    “...yes...”  
  
    “Well, I just wanted to remind you that you still owe me two sovereigns from that dinner.”   
  
  
    Evelyn had a hard time convincing Dorian _not_ to light the Iron Bull on fire after that particular conversation; for one thing, the entire party had heard the overt hunger and salacious tone dangled like a gilded invitation until the last line, and a devil’s pride was nearly as dangerous a thing as his magic. For another, she’d actually been in a position to see the naked longing that flickered across Dorian’s face and how it shuttered like the closing of a bear trap when the twist came.   
  
    So yes, she’d been just a little bit willing to let Dorian singe the Iron Bull out of spite. But only a little, and she would have felt bad afterwards.   
  
    The flirting was worse.   
  
    If she were to consider it, and she did with enough frequency that meant she probably needed a new hobby, the bickering wasn’t half as bad as their painfully awkward attempts at flirting. Even the Inquisition’s Commander was more clear about his emotions, and Cullen had a tendency to stammer when he was nervous.   
  
    The Iron Bull and Dorian both put some consideration into their appearances — Dorian with his meticulous grooming and the Bull with his not-so-subtle posturing. But put them in the same party and Dorian’s makeup became sharper lines, accents of gold and shadow, and the Iron Bull’s feats of strength and combat prowess grew more dramatic and more extravagant.   
  
    And their wings.   
  
    Their ridiculous, beautiful _wings_.   
  
    The Iron Bull’s metal _gleamed_. The patterns across his skin, already picturesque, formed more complicated shapes and dizzying fractals. When he trained, they were towering shields and battering rams, masterfully controlled to never do more damage than was necessary for practice. They folded and unfolded between armor and weapon in the blink of an eye and were an awe-inspiring reminder of why people regarded angels as some distant idea that could not be matched by mortals.   
  
    Dorian’s glass shone. Glimmers of light danced between the cuts of his plumage, refracting one source into hundreds. And he left his wings out. _All the time_.   
  
    Bull was hands down the biggest member of the Inquisition, but when Dorian’s wings were folded against his back, the devil took up nearly as much space as the angel.   
  
    “Watch it with those things, will ya?” Sera grumbled, pushing against the glass. Dorian made an indecipherable noise—  something awkwardly between a scream, a giggle, and a curse — and Sera jumped back so fast and so far that she nearly hit the opposite wall.   
  
    “What was that, Sparkler?” Varric asked with a laugh. Dorian cleared his throat and straightened up, feathers smoothing down as he did.   
  
    “They’re _sensitive_ ,” he said primly.   
  
    “Then put ‘em away, dumbass. Why’re you leaving ‘em out, anyway?” Sera grumbled.   
  
    “No one’s asking you to put your arms away,” Dorian replied. “My wings are just as much a part of me as any of your limbs are you.”   
  
    “My arms don’t double the amount of space I take up! C’mon, Bull’s got his put away!”   
  
    Evelyn saw Dorian’s eyes cut across the room to the Iron Bull, just a flicker of a glance before it dropped, his shoulders slouched ever so slightly, and the great glass wings flowed like liquid back under the cape of his robes.   
  
    It was just a moment, seemingly unremarkable in the grand scheme of things, but the expression caught in her thoughts and gnawed at her from the background. At the end of the meeting, before the group could disperse to whatever corners of the camp they usually retreated, she fell in step with Dorian and hooked their arms together. A few of the other council members looked surprised, the Iron Bull among them, but she just smiled pleasantly and dragged the devil with her to the tavern.   
  
    Once there, she claimed a decent table away from the majority of prying ears, fixed him with a glare that promised hitherto hellishly untold nightmares if he moved from his chair, and got a round of drinks strong enough to make the dwarven bartender go cross-eyed from the fumes.   
  
    “So what’s up with you and the Bull?” She asked on her return, putting one eye-watering mug in front of Dorian. “And if you make any kind of lewd joke about genitalia, you’ll be losing yours. Providing devils have that.”   
  
    “Rude,” sniffed Dorian. “Where do you think little devils come from? Certainly not trees.”   
  
    “Dorian.”   
  
    He huffed indignantly.   
  
    “Nothing is _up_ between us, lewd or otherwise.” He said.   
  
    Evelyn scrutinized his expression and body language as she drank. The silence between them drove out the traditional banter that built up to heavy conversation, occupying spaces that would otherwise have been filled with leading questions and deflections. With a person like Dorian, silence was faster than a siege weapon in dropping defenses.   
  
    “Do you want there to be?” She asked eventually, wisely waiting until he put his mug down. He flinched anyway; he would have choked if she hadn’t timed it right. She gave him a moment to recover anyway, but fixed him with an expectant stare in the meantime.   
  
    “I beg your pardon,” he sputtered.   
  
    “You’re excused,” she replied. “Do you want there to be something between you and the Iron Bull?”   
  
    He opened his mouth, closed it again, let his gaze drop to the tabletop, and finally rallied his composure and haughty defenses.   
  
    “It’s not an issue,” he said. “I won’t let it affect my fieldwork.”   
  
    “You’re doing fine in the field,” she assured him. “I’m not worried about that. I’m worried about _you_.”   
  
    He blinked, and then a smile warmed his silvered eyes.   
  
    “You don’t have to worry. We know what we’re doing.”   
  
    “Well, I don’t, and there’s a whole lot of crap that I don’t know.” She frowned into her drink. “I just want to know that my people are okay.”   
  
    “Are we your people?” Dorian cocked his head to the side.   
  
    “You better be.” She attempted to glower, but it came out as more of a pout. “We made a contract; I gotta look out for my glass.”   
  
    “I rather think that’s my line,” he smiled fondly.   
  
    “You’re my devil, that makes you my glass. He’s my angel, and Varric is my dwarf, and Cass is my frown-y ex-jailer, and Sera’s my headache, and Solas is my ever-increasingly-disapproving-but-still-favorite-pain-in-the-neck—”   
      
    “And Commander Cullen is your…?”   
  
    “Cullen is my ‘never-you-mind-until-you-answer-my-question’. Don’t think I’ve drunk enough that I can’t see you trying to deflect, Dorian of House Pavus.” She poked him in the chest before he had time to flinch back. It was harder than she expected. The muscle there had no give at all, and the silk of his robe slid across the skin beneath as if it was as smooth as—   
  
    “Well, it has to go somewhere,” Dorian said, cutting off her question before it fully formed. “Did you think I meant it metaphorically? I’ll thank you not to advertise it, though. There are far too many bad jokes there. Believe me, by this point I’ve heard them all.”   
  
    “All the more reason for you to reassure me that you and your glass heart are going to be fine.” She gave him a lopsided grin.   
  
    “You’re not as funny as you think you are,” he sighed.   
  
    “I do worry,” she said, leaning back and sobering as she regarded him. “I may have the Divine Mandate, but sometimes it feels like there’s very little I can do that actually helps anyone. I consider us friends, Dorian, and if there’s anything I can do to help you find happiness, I want to know. Even if it’s just buying a round and letting you rant for a while.”   
  
    “Truly?” His voice came out strained, almost too soft to carry over the ambient sound of the bar.   
  
    “I may have met him first, but I know you better,” she said. “You’re the only one who knows what I saw in that future, and you kept me from losing my head. So if I can ever return the favor…”   
  
    The muscle in the strong column of Dorian’s throat worked silently, swallowing his habitual aureate deferences and rhetoric before they could taint the moment.   
  
    “I’ll be fine,” he reassured her when he could speak again. “It’s not a new dance to either of us. We meet, we have our little dalliance, we foil each other’s intrigues, and we part ways until we cross paths again. Somehow we’ve come to alternate whose turn it is to pursue the other. This is the first time we’re actually working toward the same end, and it’s my turn to engage him.”   
  
    “So why are you holding back?” A thunderous scowl suddenly crossed her face. “If someone’s giving you trouble about this, I’ll bash ‘em. Just say the word, I’ll get my shield—”   
  
    “Your support is dearly appreciated, if refreshingly novel. Rest assured, however, that I don’t need you to abuse what authority you have cultivated here on account of my — well, on my account.” He took a sip of his terrible drink, disguising whether his wince was over the ale or the conversation.  
  
    A minute passed, and then another. Evelyn waited them out with the patience of a true shield-wall, and eventually Dorian faltered.   
  
    “The Iron Bull hasn’t claimed the Chargers for the Qun.”   
  
    “All right. What’s that mean?”   
  
    “For as long as he’s kept that company, he must have had a least half a dozen chances to turn any or all of them over for conversion. He’s had charges before, all loyally part of the Infernal Device now.”   
  
    “He told us he’s not here to convert people.”   
  
    “He’s here to serve the Qun; a war-axe can still be used to cut firewood, in a pinch. And yet, they’re _his_ Chargers. In all the time I’ve known him, they’ve never been something he keeps. But now they are.”   
  
    Evelyn considered that for a moment, along with the very slight emphasis on certain words.   
  
    “Dorian,” she said gently, “do you want to be kept?”   
  
    “What a ridiculous thing to say,” he scoffed immediately, but once more she waited him out. “I will admit that it might be nice to have a little more… stability… in our sort of understanding, but surely that’s to be expected after such a long … acquaintance.”   
  
    He let his gaze fall back to the contents of mug, now shallow enough that he could see the bottom through the hazy amber liquid.   
  
    “It can be very tiring, to be as we are.” He said. “Very tiring, and very lonesome. A constant and consistent adversary who knows you as well as you know yourself can be surprisingly comforting. I suppose I should like to see if it brings him the same comfort that he gives me, but…”   
  
    “If the answer is going to hurt, you don’t want to know.”   
  
    “You read me far too well for as briefly as we’ve known each other,” Dorian toasted her with his glass and knocked back the rest of the ghastly liquor. “Now don’t you dare go having a similar little heart-to-heart with him, trying to dig for information. The Iron Bull is a far better interrogator than you; he’ll have you sussed out in no time.”   
  
    “All right, all right.” Evelyn winced. “I won’t meddle, but you have to come drinking with me and at least tell me what’s going on.”   
  
    “As long as you’re buying.”   
  
    “Are you kidding? Of course I’m buying; you make the best faces when you drink Dragon’s Piss.”   
  
    “That had better be a seriously inadvisably named liquor, or I shan’t be responsible for my actions.”   
  
    Evelyn laughed.   
  



	6. Through a Dark Glass

    The fall of Haven brought the Inquisition together in a way no amount of fetch-questing across the realms could. No well-intentioned and overly glorified errand could create a bond like the shared trauma of trying to stand against Corypheus.   
  
    The horror from an elder age was a nightmare rendered in flesh and stone. Human features were made monstrous, pulled too thin, pinched too sharp, warped like wax left too close to the fire. Jagged black shards of obsidian dotted parched grey skin, both of which cracked open in places to show veins of glowing, corrupted red minerals inside. He had a devil’s wings, but they possessed none of Dorian’s sweeping grace or Felix’s wondrous colors, or even the solidarity of Gereon’s sea-glass. Instead, they were ungainly things: uneven sheets of volcanic glass seemingly hacked off in slabs and shards and slapped together in vaguely wing-like shapes. They reflected horrors. The eye caught full sight of all the little dreads that previously only lurked in peripheral vision.   
  
    And to top it all off, the bastard _monologued_.  
   
    “Fools and weaklings! You dare stand before one who has torn open the doors of the Golden City of the Gods? I have walked their hallowed halls and seen the secrets they dared to keep. I have laid claim to the souls of the last immortals! The Divine Mandate is mine by right, and no bumbling gnat shall keep it from me!”   
  
    “Blah, blah, blah,” Evelyn muttered, holding her shield up to block the assault of some twisted minion that leapt at her. “He keeps talking, but all I hear is a spoiled brat who won’t share.”   
  
    “Give him some credit, my dear,” said Dorian as he threw gouts of flame at her attacker. “Most spoiled brats aren’t nearly as eloquent in their tantrums.” A shadow loomed behind his back, only to be swiftly cut down as the Iron Bull thundered up and intercepted.   
  
    “If you’re going to taunt the bad guys, can you at least wait until we’ve got crowd control managed?” He growled. “I’m not always going to be in position to save your pretty ass.”   
  
    Dorian rolled his eyes. If he refrained from a witty comeback more involved than a frustrated groan, well, channeling a soul’s power into the primordial forces of the universe was more difficult than it looked.   
  
    Corypheus held up an orb of strange design, and the ridge on its surface glowed with the same unnerving light as Evelyn’s mark. She cried out and dropped to her knees. Her sword fell from numb fingers. Her shield sagged.   
  
    Bull, Dorian, and Varric immediately closed ranks around her. Fierce loyalty made them seem larger than they actually were. The Bull’s metal and Dorian’s glass arched around their group, weaving together in a way the mundane counterparts could never have copied, even in the hands of the most masterful craftsmen. Bull’s quills turned aside blades and arrows, alchemical fire and devil’s spells broke on Dorian’s plumage, and in the gaps between them, Varric’s arrows found paths into their enemies.   
  
    Holding the wall felt like an eternity, though it was actually barely half a minute before Evelyn shook off whatever Corypheus did to her and took up her sword again. The Iron Bull acknowledged her recovery with a grunt, Dorian with even less as his glass took a hit from a Red Shadow that none of them had noticed. A network of jagged fractures appeared in amidst the otherwise pristine cuts, vanishing again only as the glass flared with light and reshaped itself.  
  
    “Fall back!” She growled. “Follow the others up the path.”   
  
    “They’ll be on us before we get that far,” Varric said, still firing. “We’re barely keeping them back as is.”    
    “I know. I’m going to give them a more immediate concern.”   
  
    “I don’t like the sound of that,” said the Bull.  
      
    “That better not mean what I think it does!” hissed Dorian.   
  
    “You’re sure about this?” asked Varric.   
  
    “I’ll be fine. I’ll be right behind you.”   
  
  
    Watching the mountain crumble atop Evelyn as she defied the monster from the Fall of the Gods, they all shared the same sickening feeling that they should have seen it coming. The last catapult was right there. They’d aimed it not minutes before that confrontation. They knew her mind. They just … thought she’d run faster.   
  
    They waited in the makeshift camp. Waiting was an inaccurate term; they lingered. They languished. They were a held breath at the bottom of a lake. The Bull paced, grumbling and growling to himself and anyone who’d listen. Few dared to stand against a Qunari angel in such a state, so mostly he snapped at the devil.   
  
    “Should have dragged her with us,” the Bull muttered. “Shouldn’t have let her do it alone. I should have stayed with her.”   
  
    “If you had, we might have an easier time finding her,” Dorian retorted, but it was half-hearted and distracted. His gaze over the valley was unfocused, distant and ever moving. “Your horns would stick up through the snow, at least.”   
  
    “And what are you doing to help?” The Iron Bull rounded on him with a snarl, drawing a reproachful scowl from the Spymaster as she dragged the Commander back from going out with another search party.   
  
    “What I was brought on to do,” Dorian snapped peevishly, and his grey eyes glowed with the same violet veins that threaded through his frost-encrusted wings. “Magic.”   
  
    “Oh yeah? You gonna ‘magic’ her back to us?”   
  
    There was no answer for a long, tense moment: Dorian’s concentration became absolute, and the light in his wings steadily intensified, drawing the attention of other Inquisition members. Unlike the glow of the fire, this light was a preternatural purple that boasted mystery as well as power, and it burned behind the eyelids even after looking away.   
  
    “Dorian?” The Bull’s frown shifted, and he waved a hand in front of the devil’s face. The energy in Dorian’s glass arched through him from his feathers to his feet and flittered across the ground before disappearing in the snow, a worrying and constant pattern.   
  
    And then suddenly he came back to himself, blinking and shaking his head. He glanced around, still only seemingly half-present.   
  
    “Need an anchor. Beacon. Something—” He caught sight of the Iron Bull with a start. “Oh, sod it. No time like the present.” He closed his wings around himself, the eerie light making them almost opaque, and when he unfolded them again he held a heart-shaped amulet of clear glass with a single spark caught inside. He thrust the amulet at the Iron Bull. “Take this. Hold it. For Order’s sake, don’t lose it.”   
  
    And as soon as it was in the Bull’s hand, Dorian — melted. In the span of a heartbeat, all his flesh transformed into the same transparent glass as his wings, and then he collapsed in on himself until there was nothing left but his footprints in the snow.   
  
    “What just happened?” Varric gaped. “Did we just lose our devil?”   
  
    “He has a contract with Evelyn. He can’t leave— right?” Cullen staggered over and looked distraught. “Unless she’s— unless he’s collecting—”   
  
    “Of course! It’s so simple!” Solas cried out, cutting him off.   
  
    “Translation for the rest of the class, Chuckles?” Varric drawled.   
  
    “He’s using the forfeits of their contract to find her. ” Solas’ mouth pulled into a slight smile, which was more reassuring than his actual words. He turned back to the main camp, pitiful as it was. “Quickly, bring blankets and whatever healer can be spared. They should be returning—”   
  
    As if on cue, violet light flared from the spark caught in the Bull’s hand, and with a spray of snow, a glass-enclosed jumble of shapes tumbled to a stop at his feet. It would have been a softer landing, had he not trampled the banks flat with his pacing, but Dorian’s wings were fused quartz and stronger than mundane glass. They unfurled to reveal Dorian and Evelyn, curled up together and caked in ice.   
  
    “Never do that again,” she muttered into his shoulder. “Whatever that was, never do it again.”   
  
    “Sorry, next time I _won’t_ haul you with me through miles of snowy mountains by the virtue of sheer magical ingenuity.” He flicked an icicle out of her hair. “You can just walk like a normal human and hope your toes don’t fall off.”  
  
    “I’m sorry, which one of us just buried an ancient megalomaniac and his undead dragon under an avalanche, and which one of us just flailed into the snow like a lost kitten?” She managed a weak chuckle despite chattering teeth.   
  
    “Lies,” he hissed, and then suddenly smirked a very devilish smirk. “Commander, Lady Trevelyan has done a slander on my sterling character after all the trouble I went through to fetch her. You should have words with her.”   
  
    “If she’s got a complaint, I’m sure she’s justified,” said Commander Cullen dryly, but there was no disguising the relief on his face.   
  
    “Attacked at every turn,” Dorian sighed, and then shoved Evelyn into the snow in Cullen’s direction. It made little difference to her bedraggled state, but the Commander rushed forward to help her out.   
  
    “I just had a mountain’s worth of snow fall on me!” She growled at Dorian. “Be gentle with me!”   
  
    “I rather expect that would be his line,” the devil drawled. Fortunately for Evelyn, between the cold and the snow burn, there was no way anyone could tell if she was blushing. She allowed Cullen to lead her to the fireside, and Dorian pulled his wings back in before attempting to lever himself up.   
  
    His effort proved unnecessary; no sooner than he had retracted his glass than a massive hand fisted in his shirt and hauled him upright.   
  
    “Obliged,” Dorian started to say, but never got past the first vowel sound because suddenly the Bull was kissing him. Or he was kissing the Bull. It was a little fuzzy on the actual semantics. Time in general became something of a forgotten concept until their lungs selfishly reminded them of the need for air.   
  
    They came apart with a gasp, and in Dorian’s case, a grin.   
  
    “Now _that’s_ how a man should be thanked for his efforts—”   
  
    Bull kissed him again, less angrily but no less forcefully.   
  
    “You gotta quit pulling these disappearing acts,” the angel growled. “One of these days we’ll stop being impressed by them.”   
  
    “In my defense, the Redcliffe one wasn’t my fault, and this time it was intended to be helpful.” Dorian sagged against the warm bulk of the Iron Bull. “It’s not the kind of thing I can do easily, or even regularly.”   
  
    “Your doohickey thing—” Bull lifted the amulet, but Dorian put his hand on top and gently closed the angel’s fingers over it.   
  
    “Hold on to it for me,” he said quietly. “In case of any more necessary daring rescues.”   
  
    “Our big damn hero.”   
  



	7. Rust and Things

    Things got busier once they commandeered the abandoned fort of Skyhold. The place was ancient — Solas claimed it was from the very beginning of the Age of the Gods, possibly even before the elves wrested the Divine Mandate from the Titans and their stone-born children. Evelyn, as usual, took his history lessons with a grain of salt and a shot of pragmatism; while whatever enchantments lingered there made the place still roughly inhabitable after centuries of disuse, they had done little to keep it from being ultimately abandoned and subsequently lost to everyone but extreme historians. It wouldn’t matter if Corypheus couldn’t reach them in the mountains if traders and their supply carts couldn’t get to them either. Hunger didn’t need the aid of an undead dragon to kill them.   
  
    The task of actually building the road fell to those with real skills in construction. The task of clearing the way from bandits and other n’ere do wells who were all to happy to prey on travelers to the Inquisition’s new seat of power… that task belonged to the newly dubbed Inquisitor herself.   
  
    So it was that she and her favorite party rose every morning at an indecent hour and spent their days hiking across the Frostbacks and the Hinterlands, looking for new and interesting people to beat up and make reconsider their life choices.   
  
    “You don’t have to put it like that,” Commander Cullen protested mildly but without much conviction when Evelyn commented on her itinerary. It was a testament to the sourness of her pre-dawn, sans-coffee mood that she glowered at him in response. Normally she couldn’t be within eyesight of the man without grinning.   
  
    “Varric and Dorian developed a game called “Poor Life Decisions” where they bet on whether we’re fighting people who willingly chose a life of crime or were driven there by circumstance. They base it on how fast they can break enemy morale. They’ve got the _scouts_ in on it. They got grumpy when we were clearing out the last camp because it looked like it was going to be a tie.”   
  
    “Who ended up winning?” Cullen blurted out, and then blushed as she laughed.   
  
    “Bull did. He landed a critical strike on a guy and cleaved him pretty much in two. The rest of the cell backed down pretty quickly after that.”   
  
    Cullen winced. “I’d imagine.”   
  
  
    They were working on clearing a pass to the Storm Coast when they ran into trouble. They were low on supplies and trying hard to reach camp with no further encounters, but they still had to go through a narrow path with high sides. None of them liked it, and they liked it even less when a sound like rusty metal grating against even more rusty metal filled the air above them.   
  
    Immediately, Bull’s wings snapped out and over the party’s heads like a canopy.  
  
    “Get down!” He snarled, and the rest of the team scrambled to obey. Their cover rang with the horrific echoes of whatever descended making impact and sliding off. Their opponents landed, and serrated metal flashed under the overhead aegis of the Bull’s wings. All that kept Varric from an unfortunate and nasty haircut was Dorian’s timely casting of a barrier.   
  
    There was another angel with the mercenaries — three of them, no less — but unlike the Iron Bull, the living metal of their wings was rusty, stained, and pitted like uncared for weapons.   
  
    “Tal-Vashoth,” growled the Bull, pulling his wings back now that the overhead strike was finished. “Fallen angels who went mad and abandoned the Qun.”   
  
    “Oh yes, because deciding you no longer want a Device to dictate your life is such a sure sign of insanity,” Dorian muttered, though not quietly enough.   
  
    “Your people are listening to a Chaos-fucked megalomaniac, so I don’t think you have any room to talk,” retorted the Bull. Then he grinned that special, sadistic grin that preceded a pun. “Glass houses.”   
  
    Dorian groaned, and that was really all the time they had before the fight began. And it was a fight. A fast, furious, and downright dirty fight. The Bull was good, but there were three Tal-Vashoth, and all the mundane mercenaries to deal with as well. Dorian linked lightning through as much of the living metal as he could, pulling back on the chain only when it tried to jump to the Bull. Varric’s bolts found marks in flesh and between pieces of mortal armor, and his clever mechanisms further pried open defenses as Evelyn hacked her way to the gooey centers.   
  
    At one point, just as the Bull managed to take down one of the fallen angels, another one jumped on his back and pinned his wings while they were still extended by tangling their metal together in an obscene grapple. Rather than allowing another mercenary to take advantage of the Bull’s prone state, however, the Tal-Vashoth went into a frenzy and tried to pry the living metal from the Bull’s back while biting for his throat. The Bull grabbed his attacker by his broken horns and, in one mighty heave, flipped him over his head.   
  
    Mostly over. The Bull’s horns gouged a fair amount of fallen angel flesh in the process.   
  
    By the time the fight was over, the Iron Bull was faintly dripping with blood, both his own and otherwise.   
  
    “You’re a disaster,” Dorian sighed. “The only comfort is that it’s probably the end for these pants—” he reached out, but stopped suddenly as the Bull tensed and the armor patterns rippled up in anticipation of another attack. The rictus passed almost immediately, but Dorian had already pulled away and started to busy himself with checking the bodies for anything useful.   
  
    “Are you okay?” Evelyn asked, holding out the last potion. The Bull took it gratefully and downed it in a single swallow.   
  
    “Don’t much like running into that many Tal-Vashoth,” he admitted grudgingly. “Doesn’t tend to bode well for the civilians in the area. When angels fall, we take a lot of crap out with us on the way down.”   
  
    “Well, those three aren’t going to be hurting anyone anytime soon,” Evelyn said, watching Varric gesture for Dorian to incinerate a corpse he’d finished looting.   
  
    “Yeah, but how many did they hurt getting here?” Bull replied. “The Qun gives us purpose. Reason. Order. Without it, we’re just as Chaos-hungry as Dorian’s volcanic glass asshole of a devil.”   
  
    “Corypheus isn’t _my_ anything!” Dorian objected from across the field, distance as usual presenting no barrier to him hearing his own name.   
  
    “He’s got a point,” Evelyn said. She smiled as the Bull raised a curious eyebrow. “Dorian made the choice to come to the Inquisition, not the Venatori. You decided the same way.”   
  
    “The Qun sent me here.”   
  
    “Did it physically pick you up and drop you on that beach? Did it walk your legs across half the realms with me? Because if it did, I seriously need to get a better understanding of how things work for you guys.”   
  
    The Iron Bull didn’t squirm — he was too composed for that, and Evelyn’s cocky confidence wasn’t enough to break his kind of composure, but he did shift a little, visibly uncomfortable.   
  
    “I don’t do the theology part— that’s for the messenger class. The Qun tells me to go somewhere, and I go. If I didn’t, I’d be Tal-Vashoth.”   
  
    “But you’re not, so they’re not you, either.” She shrugged. “You’ve got an ‘Order’, and Dorian has an ‘Order’, and crap, by now, even I probably have an ‘Order’. Qun or contract, we’ll bring Order back and stop Corypheus. You won’t rust, Bull.” 

 

* * *

  
  
    “The thing is…” Evelyn later complained to Cullen, once they were safely back at Skyhold. “The thing _is—_ ”  
  
    Cullen’s brow furrowed, trying to follow the train of conversation after they’d both had too many ales to continue reasonable discussion.   
  
    “There’s a thing?” It started out with Evelyn recounting the Bull’s unease in the pass, but devolved into commentary on one of the bard’s ridiculous songs. Something about the kind of ballad with tragically doomed lovers or… something.   
  
    “The thing!” Evelyn whined. Her hands fluttered as she gestured wildly but not entirely randomly, mostly in the direction of Dorian and the Iron Bull.   
  
    “The thing.” He blinked, and then his jaw dropped. “There’s a thing?”   
  
    “There is such a thing,” she nodded emphatically.   
  
    “I thought they were…” He made a hand motion that was supposed to represent ‘at each others’ throats’. Whether an observer to their discussion would interpret it correctly was unclear, but Evelyn understood, and she reached over and rearranged his hands to something she intended to mean ‘at each others’ throats in a completely different way’. Cullen’s eyes widened almost comically.   
  
    “It would be such a good thing,” she sighed. Her fingers remained entangled with Cullen’s, and his face grew steadily more rosier as he realized and she seemingly remained oblivious. “A happy thing. A bring-everyone-together thing. There ought to be more things like that.”   
  
    “Which—” Cullen’s voice caught in his throat, and he coughed a little to clear it. “Which thing are we talking about?” He gave her hand a little squeeze, just to remind her that she was still holding his fingers captive.   
  
    “Iron Bull and Dorian,” she said plainly, and before his heart had a chance to sink, she rearranged their hands again in a more comfortable — and more obvious — clasp. “I thought _our_ thing was perfectly clear.”   
  
    “Ah.”   
  
    “The thing is… they don’t act any different with each other.” She said. “Bicker, bicker, bicker. All day, it’s banter and snipe. Dorian criticizes Bull’s manners, Bull pokes holes in whatever suggestion Dorian makes, innuendo everywhere and showing off every step of the way. I thought the flashy stuff was some kind of courtship ritual or something, but they’re still at it!”   
  
    She dropped her head to the table, forehead thunking lightly against the wood.   
  
    “You don’t have to take them both out with you all the time, you know.” Cullen said in what he hoped was a reasonable tone of voice. “You could take Solas, or the lady enchanter from Orlais, or Cassandra or that other soldier, what was his name…” Evelyn sat up just far enough to give him a look of wild-eyed horror.   
  
    “Split them up? When we go into _combat_? They are the _worst_ mother hens in the world!” She hissed. “Have you ever seen an angel worry over their charge? Ask Krem. It’s all… loom-y passive aggressive looks while everything else gets suddenly super convenient. Which is nice until he suddenly decides you’re ready to get back up to par, and then it’s time to work twice as hard to make up for the indulgence.”   
  
    “I’m afraid to ask about Dorian, then.” He smiled as she groaned and laid her head back down again.   
  
    “He’s _worse_.” She whimpered. “If I leave him behind, he distracts himself by coming up with terrifying new spells. Literally terrifying — they invoke fear. If I take him and not Bull, then he focuses all his attention on _me_ because he thinks if I come back with as much as a scratch, people will say he’s gunning for my soul. And then when we come back, Bull mother-hens all over the _both_ of us.”  
  
    “Ah,” said Cullen wisely.   
  
    “The thing is,” Evelyn sighed, forcing herself to sit up straight again. “The thing is that Dorian treats their relationship like one of his Black Contracts, where if he provides something, he’s going to get something of equal value in return. Bull treats it like it’s the loophole in his orders. The Qun doesn’t tell him _not_ to, so it doesn’t matter if he _does_.”  
  
    “Ah,” Cullen said, and, “Oh.”   
  
    He pondered that for a moment while Evelyn finished her drink. “This is a disaster waiting to happen, isn’t it?”   
  
    “Maybe. Maybe not. But Cullen?” She clutched his hand tighter. “I’m scared. Anyone can see how much they want this to work. If they can’t make it work after trying for all this time, what hope do the rest of us have?”   
  



	8. The Waste of Broken Dreams

    For all his vocal hatred of the cold, Dorian didn’t seem to enjoy the dry heat of the Hissing Wastes, either. Either that, or the increasing number of Venatori they found among the dunes and ruins put him in a permanently bad mood.   
  
    “Sure are a lot of these bastards,” Sera commented idly during combat as her arrows found marks in flesh and glass alike. “Guess devils ain’t as clever as they’re made out to be, eh?”   
  
    “They have their tricks,” answered the Iron Bull, pulling out of a downward slash to pommel strike a devil who tried to magically relocate behind him. His wings shot out catch the two sell-swords attempting to flank him while he was occupied, and they met grisly ends on the edges of his feathers. “I earned my metal going through devils in Seheron. Trust me, they’re clever enough to be trouble.”   
  
    Dorian, uncharacteristically, made no comment. Evelyn saw him shoot lightning through a devil with cloudy, rippled wings; he didn’t even blink at the flash, but watched as his opponent shattered into fragments indistinguishable from the sand on which they fought.   
  
    “Howzzat work, anyway?” Sera went on, oblivious o the tension of their devil. “You lot born all clang-y and shiny? Or ‘sat come in when you’re older?”   
  
    “The Qun grants it when you’re of age,” Bull replied, “once you show you’re ready and worthy to serve.”   
  
    Sera put an arrow through the last devil’s chest with a sound like the breaking of stained glass windows, and their enemy fell apart in a spray of colored shards.   
  
    “You doing okay, Sparky?” The archer glanced over at Dorian, who regarded the remains with a stormy expression. The emotion heralded a rumble of thunder in an otherwise clear sky, and the Bull and Sera took a cautious step back. As soon as they were clear, lightning cascaded to the ground, throwing up sand and fusing it into rough glass in the same instant.   
  
    “Whoa, watch it!” Sera yelled and shied behind the Iron Bull. “What was that for?”   
  
    The devil’s face twisted into the kind of cold courtier’s mask that was suited to Orlesians and their game than to Evelyn’s favorite drinking companion.   
  
    “Saying goodbye,” he said brightly and offered no further explanation.   
  
    “Friggin’ freaky light show,” Sera scowled, rubbing her arms uneasily. The Bull’s brow furrowed, and he glanced back and forth between the devil and the fulgurite.   
  
    “Seriously,” the angel said. He stepped around and Dorian glowered. “What is your problem?”   
      
    “Dorian?” Evelyn prompted.   
  
    The silence drew out, tempered only by the sound of the wind whistling across the new glass.   
  
    “I knew them,” Dorian said at last. His voice was barely more than the rasp of the shifting sands.   
  
    “What?”   
  
    “I knew them. We trained together at the Spire. We graduated in the same year.” His face creased with sudden grief. “We weren’t friends, but they weren’t — they weren’t like this. They couldn’t have…” He shook his head. “Octavia was too proud to serve any lord, and Aurelius was too foolish. He’d never be able to make a Red Contract. He was painfully honest! But here they are. Were.   
    “I wonder what that says about the state of the Spire,” he said quietly. His gaze fixed on the twisted glass. His eyes flickered with power, and he exhaled; the sculpted fulgurite disintegrated on the wind of his breath.   
  
      
    In their tent that night, Bull and Dorian let their wings entwine; glass and iron running over each other in mirror of their roaming hands. Dorian was never the quietest of partners to begin with, but that night he rambled a constant litany of Tevene, desperate and breathy. His consonants hissed and snapped against Bull’s skin. Vowels rested on his tongue, heavy and rich as gemstones. Over and over he rambled: prayers, incantations, promises. Each kiss burned with power, and Bull encouraged him to keep going until he was out of breath and all that remained was a trace of the taste of smoke on his lips.   
  
    “Feel better?” The Bull asked once Dorian was boneless atop him. The devil’s hand skirted up the relaxing patterns on the angel’s chest and caught on the cord wrapped around the glass heart.   
  
    “Good, bad, or utterly foolish, I suppose we’ve made our choices.” Dorian sighed in the Common Tongue.   
  
    “Next time, maybe a different design?” Bull put a hand over Dorian’s to stop him from fidgeting with the glass. “Something fierce or powerful, instead of a cute little leaf?”   
  
    The devil blinked, and then sputtered.   
  
    “A leaf?” He sat up. “It’s a heart!”   
  
    Bull held it up and squinted.   
  
    “That’s not a heart. I’ve seen hearts.”   
  
    “Not that kind— though I’m sure by the time you’re through, those don’t look the way they ought to either.”   
  
    “I don’t break all of ‘em,” the Bull protested mildly, and Dorian huffed.   
  
    “If you don’t want it, give it back.”   
  
    Bull’s fingers closed over it, gentle but as unmovable as a cage with a Ferelden lock.   
  
    “You gave it to me. I’m not giving it back just because it’s cute.” He nipped at Dorian’s neck, just above where the devil’s collar would hide a mark. “We made our choices.”   
  



	9. Horns Up, Fall Down

    The Iron Bull got the message first, through whatever channels he received his information from the Qun. Evelyn liked to imagine it as some kind of divine inspiration arriving in a ray of light or whispered on the wind in the secret tongue of angels, but she was well aware that it was more likely encoded messages carried by bird that decrypted to the not-so-secret tongue of Qunlat.   
      
    When he brought it to her, his face was serious, but there was an undercurrent of pride and excitement in his eye.   
  
    “The Qun has reports of a large force of devils leaving Tevinter and heading south. Looks like they’re aiming for the Storm Coast as a point of entry.”   
  
    “Venatori?” Evelyn raised an eyebrow.   
  
    “You know any other reason why an army of devils would ship out?”   
  
    “Well, can’t hurt to check it out.” She stood up from her desk. “I’ll get Cullen to rally some troops—”   
  
    “There’s more.” Iron Bull held up a hand to forestall her.   
  
    “More than Chaos Cultists?”   
  
    “The Qun is sending a legion to assist you.”   
  
    “The _Qun_ is —” She sat back down. “The Qun is sending more angels?”   
  
    “If this goes well, you’re gonna be the first human to establish a real alliance, the first the Qun’s ever offered. Not only does that mean we’ll recognize you as an official world Order, but the Qun may also start accepting that you’re the rightful holder of the Divine Mandate, not just an upstart pretender.”   
  
    A slow smile blossomed across Evelyn’s face. For the first time in what felt like ages, things looked like they might improve. Too often they faced the Venatori and cut them down, only to be driven back by the arrival of Corypheus’ undead dragon. They lost good soldiers with every encounter, but there seemed to be no end of devils and sell-swords on the side of Chaos.   
  
    An alliance with the Qunari could provide valuable reinforcements and a much needed morale boost.   
  
    Things were finally looking up.   
  
  
    And of course it came crashing right back down. Amidst air full of flashing metal and fragmented glass, there was one brief moment when it looked like they would have a clean win. Evelyn and her party led one half of a pincher attack on the cultists’ advance landing party, with Krem and the Chargers holding the other side. The Qunari legion engaged the main force of the Venatori yet to land, though that was a far more tightly matched battle than the one on land.   
  
    The tide turned as Evelyn glanced over the dusty carnage around her. Her party was still in good health; Dorian was more acerbic than usual, but even the Iron Bull was relatively unscathed. On the other side of the gully, Krem signaled that the Chargers were in similar condition.  
  
    “Your wards are quite capable.” Gatt, Bull’s elven-convert contact, said with obvious approval. His wings were quicksilver, elusive and deadly as befitting a rogue. “You have cultivated them well. They’ll make excellent additions to the Qun.”   
  
    “They’ll get there if they get there,” the Bull shrugged. “I didn’t do much, just gave them the chance to save themselves.”   
  
    “Already they do great things to further the ineffable plan,” Gatt went on, picking the less challenging meaning behind Bull’s words if he even caught both.  
  
    “Oh yes, how wonderful that it’s all furthering the grand design of the Infernal Device,” Dorian drawled. Before Gatt could start snapping a second time about the corruption and oppression in Tevinter that enslaved him to a devil prior to Bull’s angelic intervention, an explosion of fire rocked the shore. More Venatori came out of the tree line, a far greater number than the initial raiding party that the Inquisition just dispatched.   
  
    “Shit!” Evelyn raised her weapons. Gatt turned to the Iron Bull, eyes flashing quick and lethal like his wings.   
  
    “There’s enough of them there to destroy the legion. We have to draw them away!”   
  
    “Right, I’ll just slide down there—” Evelyn was already heading for the cliffside, but Gatt grabbed her by the arm and dragged her back.   
  
    “This hill is too steep! You’ll break your leg, or worse, your neck.” To the Bull, he said, “Your charges are on lower ground. If they act as decoys—”   
  
    “They’ll be slaughtered!” It was Dorian who cried this out, only half surprisingly. “By the time reinforcements make it to their fallback point…”   
  
    “They will die in a manner befitting a servant of the Qun, and will be honored as such.”   
  
    Dorian, finally past arguing with Gatt, stared up at the Bull with wide, grey eyes.   
  
    “They’re _yours,”_ he whispered.   
  
    The Iron Bull balked. He glanced back and forth between Gatt and the Chargers on the hill as the ominous chanting of the devils below grew louder. Finally, he looked to Evelyn, his indecision freezing his body except for his hands, which clenched for weapons that couldn’t decide for him either.   
  
    “Give the order to fall back,” she said, quiet but adamant, resistant in a way that neither metal nor glass could compare. The Iron Bull nodded and signaled to Krem, and the Chargers pulled out.   
  
    “You’ve doomed the legion,” Gatt gaped, half incredulous and half pained. “You betrayed the Qun!”   
  
    “Shut up!” Evelyn snapped at him. “I can still deal with it. I”ll—”   
      
    There was an earth-shaking explosion, and the Inquisition forces scrambled to keep their balance. Over the coast, sheets of lightning rained down on the legion, filling the air with the screams of angels.   
  
    “I can’t believe you betrayed the Qun,” Gatt moaned. “You, who saved me, turning Tal-Vashoth for a handful of charges that never even converted!”   
  
    The Bull rocked back like he’d been struck a critical blow to the core.   
  
    “He’s not mad. He’s not going to rust. He’s following Order — _my_ Order.” Evelyn said coldly.   
  
    “Your Order destroyed an entire legion of the Qun’s angels!”   
  
    “My Order was for the preservation of our agents.” There was something different in her tone, now. Not new— it was something that was in the making since she first started down the path to become the Inquisitor and was only just now finished assembly. The Mark on her hand glowed as she spoke, sending its radiance down the length of her sword blade. “The Venatori destroyed the legion, not me. Maybe if you hadn’t stopped me, I’d be taking them down.”   
  
    “Your Order—”   
  
    “My Order exists to protect the things I love: friends, family, home, and hope. If the Qun can’t understand that, then perhaps the Qun is the one that isn’t ready to be a world Order.  
    “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I have Chaos cultists to finish off.” She stalked over to the cliff and stepped off the side without waiting for him to respond, and where she went, her party followed. They only looked back as much as was needed to ensure that Gatt wasn’t going to put one of his knives in their backs.   
  
    They skidded down into the valley like the wrath of myths, led by a divine and glowing figure, flanked by wings of glass and iron.   
  
    The Bull tried not to feel like the descent was as metaphorical as it was literal and lost himself in the decimation of devils, dedicating each kill to one of the dead angels. One, two, five, ten, a dozen, a score; the numbers blurred in blood and bone. He caught sight of Gatt and his quicksilver wings in the fray.   
  
    “Revenge first,” the elf spat, “retribution later. We lost enough lives today.”   
  
  
    In the end, the death toll was staggering:    
        The entire Qunari legion, lost.  
        The Tevinter ship, taken down by the angels’ death throes.   
        The company of devils and their servants on the shore.   
  
        And, found among them, heart impaled on a Chaos-cultist’s staff, Gatt — his wings still extended in quicksilver spears to skewer a half-dozen Venatori.   
  
    The Iron Bull stared down at Gatt like a carved memorial. Evelyn waited beside him, patient as mercy itself, while Dorian held back in miserable silence with his wings retracted. Sera was the only one who seemed undaunted by the situation.   
  
    “What do you want to bet that he never got a report out?” She asked, earning disapproving glares from both the Bull and Evelyn. “What? It’s a good thing to check. If he didn’t, then you’re in the clear, right?”  
  
    “I fell,” the Bull answered in a monotonous, almost mechanical voice.   
  
    “Yeah, but no one else knows, do they? Who’s to say this wouldn’t have happened anyway? Could just be a miracle we made it out alive.” Sera snorted. “Piss, more often than not it is a miracle we make it out alive.”   
  
    “I picked the Chargers over the Qun. I fell. You heard Gatt. I’m Tal-fucking-Vashoth!”   
  
    “Fuck the Qun if it’s going to just chew up good people just because it’s convenient!” Sera shouted back. “When’s it ever cared what happened to the Chargers if they weren’t working for it? The rest of us, we ain’t just rocks under people’s feet you can walk over and kick around as what suits! Krem and the others, you saved them today! They’re real people, and you helped them!”   
  
    “At the cost of the legion and any hope of alliance with the Qunari.” Bull shook his head.   
  
    “Which nobody knows about—” Sera started, but Evelyn held up a hand.  
  
    “We know,” she said. “I made the call, and Bull chose to obey me. We’re not on the same page as the Qun, Sera, but we can respect it enough not to lie to them about what happened.”   
  
    “Waste of a perfectly good opportunity, you ask me.” Sera grumbled, but settled.   
  
    Dorian’s eyes lingered on the Iron Bull as gently as a hand on his shoulder.   
  
    “I’m sorry about your friend,” he said quietly. “What will you do now?”   
  
    “I gotta take his metal back,” said the Bull. He knelt down and pulled the wings from the conversion-implant in Gatt’s back; the angel’s metal froze in death in a way that quicksilver never did, making it easy to remove.   
  
    “Bull—” Evelyn hesitated, then swallowed her question. “We’re going dragon hunting when you get back, so stay safe.”   
  
    “You got it, Boss. Tell Krem he’s in charge until then,” he said, and started to leave. Dorian watched him with an expression of sick dejection and managed to hold his tongue until the angel silently passed him by.   
  
    “Bull.”   
  
    The Iron Bull paused.   
  
    “My— the glass. I expect you to return it promptly, and in the condition I gave it to you, so you can’t let them —” He gave himself a little shake and straightened up proudly. “If you don’t return it, I won’t come to you next time. Or any other time. That will be it. Do you understand?”   
  
    The Bull nodded slowly and turned away, heading for judgment. 


	10. Sins of the Father

    A week after the Iron Bull left the Inquisition, Evelyn got a request that resulted in a sizzling-mad Dorian half-dragging, half-being-dragged back to Redcliffe to meet with an emissary from the illustrious House Pavus.   
      
    “Are you sure you want to do this?” Evelyn asked, eying the death grip the devil had on his staff. “We don’t have to go. We can just turn around and go back to Skyhold.”   
  
    “No, it’s best we finish this now.” He shook his head but made no move for the inn door. “Who knows what kind of underhanded trick they’ll try after this? Besides, we haven’t had a proper sortie since the Storm Coast. We could use a chance to beat some sense into someone who sorely needs it. At least this time our opponent probably isn’t trying to destroy the world.”   
  
    “Only probably?” She raised an eyebrow.   
  
    “I have good reason to believe the lengths to which my father will go have significantly expanded over the last several years.” He shrugged, attempting to appear casual and failing due to the shadow in his eyes. “Very well. No time like the present.” He reached out and pushed the door open. The inside was dark and smokey, and far, far too quiet. “Uh-oh, looks like nobody’s home. I don’t like the look of this.”   
  
    “Dorian.” A devil appeared in the stairwell, dressed in fine but weathered robes and with milky glass wings folded tightly against his back.   
  
    Dorian’s expression went cool and viciously neutral.   
  
    “Father.”   
  
    “Oh boy,” Evelyn muttered under her breath. Her hand drifted to her sword hilt, resting but ready.   
  
    “My apologies for the deception, Inquisitor,” Halward of House Pavus dipped his head in acknowledgment. “I did not intend for this to inconvenience you.”   
  
    “Of course not,” Dorian snapped. “What would the neighbors think if they saw you consorting with the dread Inquisitor?”   
  
    “Dorian—”   
  
    “So what is it this time? Kidnapping or warm, family reunion?”  
  
    “Must you do this?” Halward sighed.   
  
    “Considering you _did_ trick him into showing up, I think he’s got good reason to be angry,” said Evelyn with deceptive mildness.    
  
    “This — This isn’t want I wanted,” Halward shook his head, looking weary.   
  
    “Always what _you_ want!” Dorian snapped, surging forward. “But this is _my_ business, and you cannot run it for me!”   
  
    “Your business is House business—” Halward sounded like he was trying to dredge up some old argument’s momentum, but Dorian and Evelyn had an inherent tag-team rhythm to keep him from getting very far.   
  
    “Which business is this?” She asked her devil. “More soul trade?”   
  
    “If only,” growled Dorian bitterly. “My father disapproves of my preference for men.”   
  
    Halward winced, and Evelyn gaped.   
  
    “Really? That’s his problem?” She hefted her shield meaningfully.   
  
    “Every devil in Tevinter is trying to refine the perfect glass,” Dorian’s wings spread  until they brushed the roof. Veins of preternatural lightning arced through them. He was a creature simultaneously beautiful and terrible. “Clarity, strength, degree of refraction, capable of channelling more and more power… you thought you were so close, Father, but you’ll never see it passed down, or what could be refined beyond this.”   
  
    Halward didn’t answer; he just stared, expression unreadable.  
  
    “You want me to hit him, or are you calling dibs?” said Evelyn.   
  
    “If you’re ready to hit him now, wait until you hear the rest,” answered Dorian with a terrible grimace under the surface of his calm.   
  
    “Dorian, please—” Halward’s voice broke, and his wings twitched.   
      
    “He was the one who taught me to write only Black Contracts,” Dorian spat. “Only a poor broker fails to make a contract that serves everyone, he said. But what did he do when I refused to live a lie for the sake of his legacy?” He turned to face his father, and his wings furled close and tight. “You tried to take my glass and bind me in a Red Contract!”   
  
    Evelyn’s hand flew to the feather pendant around her neck.   
  
    “You heartless bastard,” she hissed, and Halward’s wings sagged open. The milky glass seemed heavy and bore visible fissures, held together by force of will alone.   
  
    “There’s no time,” he said, taking advantage of their shock. “Yes, I did those things. I thought it was for the best, but it no longer matters.”   
  
    “No longer matters?” Dorian snarled, but one of Halward’s wings cracked under its own weight, and the fracture ran all the way into his shoulder. Dorian glanced from the break to his father’s eyes with growing horror. “Father, what have you done now?”   
  
    “He knows I fled.”   
  
    “Who knows? Fled from whom?”   
  
    “The Spire has fallen,” Halward said, and, as if saying the words relieved him of both a burden and the will to carry it, he fell forward. His knees cracked as they hit the ground, and Dorian caught him before he landed on his face.   
  
    “What do you mean, the Spire has fallen? Father! Answer me!”   
  
    “The Venatori— The Elder One… he has a contract.” Halward murmured. “Old, and Red. Demands fealty — heart-glass from the Houses, every devil in the Spire. The Arbiters… could do nothing.”   
      
    “Every devil in the Spire?” Dorian gasped. “But that’s—”   
  
    “The entire Imperium?” Evelyn whispered. “We’re facing every devil in the _entire_ Tevinter Imperium?”   
  
    Halward smiled bitterly, his every movement accompanied by the sound of breaking glass.   
  
    “Not every. In foolish pride, I disowned my son. Dorian is of the Spire, but not in it. Perhaps my perfidy had some use.”   
  
    “Father—”   
  
    “I betrayed my son’s trust.” Halward’s flesh took on the cloudy, cracked appearance of his glass. “What is betraying a king or god in comparison?”  
  
    “Father, please!”  
  
    “I only wanted to hear his voice again,” Halward whispered. His milky eyes stared unblinking at the ceiling, unable to see Dorian. “To ask him to forgive me…”   
  
    The older devil exhaled and crumbled to dust in his son’s arms.   
  
  



	11. White Flags in Red Rivers

    To say the rest of the Inquisition took the news that Evelyn and Dorian brought back from Redcliffe poorly was an understatement. There was yelling. There were curses. There were even a few threats, largely when Dorian was recalcitrant in answering questions fast enough or with enough detail for Cassandra’s tastes. Evelyn had to point out that their devil had lost his father and his homeland in the same stroke before she eased off him.   
  
    Cullen, Cassandra, Leliana, and Josephine debated for hours on what course of action they could next take. The Orlesian civil war decimated the Empire’s army; even after the reconciliation of the triumvirate, there were lines of bitterness between the forces that no threat of mutual destruction mitigated. The Eastern realm was just as thinly spread; the end of its religious conflict came not from peace, but by the Inquisition and the Venatori conscripting both sides to continue the fight with a different ideology. All attempts to gain assistance from the dwarves met with — literally— stony silence, and gaining any kind of consensus from the elves was nigh impossible.   
  
    “Our only option is to seek out the Qunari,” Cullen scowled at the map, where the southernmost Qunari outpost was marked with a little silver figure on a stand. “Though that’s as likely to end in the death of whatever messenger we send as it is in them hearing out the message. Forgiveness does not seem to be among the virtues the Qun promotes.”   
  
    “Perhaps they have not yet heard of the exact outcome at the Storm Coast?” suggested Josephine with strained optimism. “Surely the legion would not know exactly what happened on shore?”   
      
    “Their land agent did, and even if we were so lucky as for there to be no others spying on the events that transpired, the Iron Bull knows, and has gone back to report.” Leliana shook her head.   
  
    “Perhaps he has not yet reached them?” Cassandra suggested. “He is traveling alone and on foot.”   
  
    “We’ve no way to tell,” said Leliana. “And, historically, attempting to fool the Qunari has gone poorly for all who try.”   
  
    “At the very least, they deserve to know about the state of the Spire,” Evelyn leaned heavily on the war table and stared at the tinted paper that marked the borders of the Tevinter Imperium. “If Corypheus comes after us directly, we’ll do our best to stop him, but if we fail, he’ll have the Divine Mandate. That may be reason enough for the Qun to reconsider the alliance. Even if it’s not, they’ll need time to prepare for the forces of Chaos.”   
  
    “Time we don’t have,” Cullen pointed to the silver marker. “This angelic stronghold gives the Qun a foothold here and throughout the Waking Sea. If what you say is true and Corypheus has the entire backing of the Spire, this is the most likely target. Should the Venatori take it, it will put them in position to crush opposition between their forces from almost anywhere in the realms. We’ll never be able to send a messenger there fast enough.”  
  
    “Perhaps you can,” said Dorian, chiming in from the doorway. He leaned against the frame, trying to appear casual but neither make-up nor magic could disguise the weariness to him.   
  
    “If you have an idea, now would be the time to share it,” Evelyn gave him a tired smile of her own.   
  
    “I can hunt down Bull with a similar trick to the one I used to find you,” he said, catching her gaze and holding it. “If he’s there, I can let him know about this new threat.”   
  
    “Can you? He’s probably a lot further away than I was.”  
  
    “It’s a slightly different situation,” said Dorian, the grey of his eyes luminous with power. “As long as he doesn’t lose the glass I gave him, I’ll be able to find him to the very end of the realms.”   
      
    Cassandra and the advisors looked impressed by his statement, but Evelyn caught how his hand curled towards his chest.   
  
    “Oh, Dorian,” she said softly. The others glanced back and forth between them, but couldn’t translate the subtext.   
  
    “Well? What shall it be, my lady?” The devil asked with deceptive brightness. Evelyn regarded him carefully for a drawn out moment before nodding slowly.   
  
    “Be careful,” she said. “Cullen and I will get the troops together and meet you there as soon as we can. With any luck, we can catch Corypheus by surprise.”   
  
    Dorian dropped into an elaborate bow, turning crystalline as he did.   
  
    “Your wish is ever my command,” he said, and then he vanished.   
  
  
    The Iron Bull’s arrival at the Qunari stronghold had not gone without notice, but there were rites that had to be observed. The legion had to be officially marked as Lost, agents had to be sent to try and recover the sacred metal, and the priests had to carefully inscribe the name of each fallen member into the mechanisms of the Qun. There were songs to be sung and prayers to be said. As a convert, there was a different set entirely for Gatt. The priests put the Iron Bull in a room to wait, and he did.   
  
    He waited. And waited. And waited. And finally, they came for him.   
  
    But they had only just begun what he thought would be his final report when he was interrupted by Dorian’s particularly flashy brand of arrival. The three angels brought in to interrogate and record cried out in shock at the brilliant, violet flare, and the Bull heard the distinctive whine of glass grating across metal.   
  
    “It’s an emergency, the Inquisitor— oh sod,” Dorian’s tone changed as soon as he noticed where he was and who was around. “I’m with the Inquisition. I come in peace, to warn you the Glass Spire has— ARGH!”  
  
    The rest of his warning died out in a scream as the Ben Hassrath recovered their vision and reacted accordingly to finding a devil in their midst; they attacked. Silver shot through the air, catching one of Dorian’s wings as he tried to winch them back in. The fused quartz of Dorian’s plumage was hardier than plain glass, but in the end, it was still glass, and the full impact sundered his limb instantly. Dorian fell to his knees, all the air driven from his lungs and shock numbing him to his own frailty as he tried to hold on to what he thought was the most important detail:   
  
    “The Glass Spire fell.”   
  
    The angelic investigators closed in on him. Bull sat frozen in his chair, forgotten in the face of a more immediate mystery.   
  
    “How’d one of them get all the way in here?” One angel murmured to another in Qunlat.   
  
    “Don’t know. What was that it said about the Inquisition?”   
  
    “Probably a trap. Remember the Storm Coast.”   
  
    “We’re just getting started with the Coast. What about the Spire?”   
  
    Dorian was barely visible between the bulky, armored forms of the Qunari, but he stared past them like they weren’t even there.   
  
    “Please,” he gasped, voice hitching as the stump of his broken wing spasmed. “Chaos comes. Will you not listen?”   
  
    “Oh, we’ll listen all right,” growled the youngest and most hot-blooded of the interrogators. His metal flickered down his legs, forming heavy bronze boots as he rested his foot on Dorian’s remaining wing. “You’ll tell us everything soon enough.”   
  
    Through all this the Iron Bull remained silent, torn between his sense of duty and the nameless, complex mess of feelings Dorian left him with at their every crossing. He must have made some motion, however, because the third investigator turned around and regarded him with a cold, mechanical stare.   
  
    “Do you know anything about this creature?” The archangel asked. Bull felt the words dry up in his throat. His tactician mind lashed out and latched on to the one scrap thrown to it.   
  
    “I know about Corypheus,” he said. “Devil in charge of the Chaos cultists. Responsible for all the monsters falling out of the sky. Claimed he cracked open the old Hall of the Gods. He’s been giving the Inquisition a hard time, and the Inquisitor’s set on giving one right back.”   
      
    In the middle of the Bull’s report, Dorian’s fingers flexed. The glass pendant around Bull’s neck twitched, and the angel’s metal rippled around it to cover the motion. The bronze Qunari pressed a little harder on Dorian’s wing, and both the reaching and the twitching stopped.   
  
    “Analysis?” The archangel asked.   
  
    “Their disunity is factored into a lot of general field tactics. Could be harder to deal with them if they’ve got a single, powerful leader finally running the show.”   
  
    “Can the Inquisition handle the threat?”   
  
    Bull didn’t answer immediately, but the archangel waited with the patience of metal itself.   
  
    “No,” said the Iron Bull at last.   
  
    “Please!” Dorian cried. “Help us! She needs you!”   
  
    “We’ll see what the priests say about you and your Inquisitor when they get here,” sneered the bronze booted one. He must have pressed harder on the glass, because Dorian flinched with a cracking sound.   
  
    “Please,” groaned Dorian. “Please, I need—” he reached out again, and the amulet tugged violently at the Bull’s neck. The Iron Bull grabbed it, but too quickly, and not cautiously enough.   
  
    Under the fervor of his duty, Dorian’s heart broke.   
  
    The devil choked, stiffened, and then sagged. His grey eyes sought out the Iron Bull’s gaze, and his face shifted through shock and dismay as his skin turned to clear glass before succumbing to a wave of fractures from beneath his collar. In the span of three heartbeats, he was glass, then … gone. Nothing more than dust on the floor beneath their feet.   
  
    “Now look what you’ve done!” The archangel snapped at the bronze assistant. “You know you have to be careful with those things! They’re delicate!”   
  
    “I was, I was!” the other angel protested. “He ought to have lasted a few more kicks before cracking!”   
  
    “What about its claim regarding the Spire of the Imperium?” the third angel asked, staring down at the remnants.   
  
    “We take that to the priests. It’s not up to us,” said the archangel, and he turned back to the Bull, who had stopped breathing when Dorian had. “We’ll be back once the Ariqun decides what to do.”   
  
    The door shut behind them and locked, heavy gears sliding massive bolts into place.   
  
    The Iron Bull pried open his hand at last, and he stared down into it. The glass of Dorian’s heart didn’t even break his skin, no matter how tightly he closed his fist.   
  
    He was alone with silence and dust.   
  
  



	12. Glass Diamond

    Evelyn was on her way to the stronghold when she felt something change. It was like being clocked in the solar plexus with a heavy shield and being stepped on by a giant at the same time, and it drove all the breath from her lungs. Unfortunately, she was on horseback at the time, and all that kept her from tumbling out of her saddle was Cassandra’s quick intervention.   
  
    “Are you all right?” she asked, steadying Evelyn’s horse with a severe frown.   
  
    “I… dunno.” Evelyn gasped, clutching her throat to try and pry the sound from it. Heat blossomed from the feather around her neck and then went violently cold, and she tore the leather cord free just in time to see the glass light up like a star was inside.   
  
    “Is that supposed to happen?” Cassandra’s frown deepened.   
  
    “Solas!” Evelyn screamed, staring at the feather with growing dread. “Solas, I think Dorian’s hurt! How do I bring him back? I should never have let him go after Bull—”   
  
    “I know little of the glass enchantments practiced by devils,” Solas shook his head, “but he said he’d give you the means. I suspect he wouldn’t make it something too complicated for you.”   
  
    “Perhaps dismounting first would be a good idea,” Cassandra pointed out, and Evelyn scrambled down from her horse and stumbled a little ways away.   
  
    She cupped the feather in her hands and thought of Dorian. Dread churned through her, cutting up her insides like ground glass.   
  
    “Come to me,” she whispered, and she felt the nauseating pressure behind her ribs tighten and sink. “Come on, you flashy bastard, I’m calling you. You don’t get to worry me and not answer. Come on!”   
      
    The feather twitched and pulsed like a dying heartbeat. For one irrational instant, she wished she’d asked for a bigger one.   
      
    “I don’t care where you are, or what you’re doing,” she growled. “You can yell at me when you get back if I’m interrupting something good, but just come here!”   
  
    The feather spasmed, and suddenly the weight of it felt like a match to the weight on her lungs. She couldn’t breathe, and her words had to be torn out of the marrow of her bones instead.  
  
    “I told you I don’t want your soul,” she rasped. “Come take it back.”   
  
    The Mark on her hand flared. Its light refracted through the cuts of the feather. Both the symbol and glass burned.   
  
    “Come here!” She yelled, and felt something break open. The glass in her hand exploded, but the fragments didn’t go far. Instead, they formed a familiar figure.   
  
   _There wasn’t enough glass._  
  
    That was the first thing she thought, seeing him standing there, composed of transparent shards that more suggested his shape than defined it. Whole parts of him were little more than hinted at by the slope of a strand or the placement of a shine.   
      
    The second thing she noticed was that he wasn’t alone.   
  
    There was a person beside him, one of flesh and blood, but thin where Dorian was normally solid and diamond-dust pale where her friend was sun-kissed. The Mark of the Divine Mandate glowed on a skinny chest, properly oriented instead of the reversed marks on the monsters that fell out of the sky.   
  
    “He wishes you wouldn’t yell,” said the newcomer in a young man’s gentle voice. “He’s coming as fast as he can.”   
  
    “Who— what are you?” Evelyn asked, torn between staring at the remnant Dorian became and the stranger he brought with him.   
  
    “Nothing, yet,” said the youth, and then he looked down at himself and seemed surprised. “Oh. I suppose I am.”   
  
    “You _are_ what?”   
  
    “Coal-That-Burns-In-The-Hearth-To-Warm-A-Weary-Traveler-Or-Hardens-To-Diamond-To-Ransom-A-Loved-One,” said the boy. “Or I could have been.”   
  
    Evelyn gaped. She felt it was warranted.   
  
    “What?”   
  
    “I was on the other side. I had not become. Now I am over here, and I am something else.” The boy extended a hand and turned it over and over, studying it wondrously. “You called, and he could not answer, so I helped.”   
  
    Evelyn looked at Dorian, whose glassy composition shifted so that she could see him shrug. They both looked at the young man, who was entranced by his shirt sleeves.   
  
    “Listen,” she started, and then paused. “Um. What should I call you?”   
  
    “You already did,” he said.   
  
    “No, I mean, what is your name?”   
  
    “Coal-That-Burns-In-The-Hearth—”   
  
    “Do you have a shorter one?” She tried, dismayed. His gaze pierced.   
  
    “ _A person, not a thing, not unless he asks for that. People can be named after things if they want, but they are not things_.” He smiled softly. “It sounds the same on your tongue, but “Cole” the boy is someone to help and protect, and “coal” is a thing that is used up and forgotten. I can help and protect too, but you can call me Cole since it makes you feel better.”   
  
    “Thank you, Cole,” said Evelyn, trying not to be disconcerted. She took a deep breath before rallying, and she gestured to the brand on his chest. “Does that hurt?”   
  
    “No,” he said, looking down at it. “I want to be here. I want to help. This lets me stay. The others don’t want it, so it comes out wrong.”   
  
    “The others,” Evelyn had a sick flash as memory provided her a detailed record of the countless monsters wearing the reversed brand that she and her companions cut down. “Oh no. Did I—”   
  
    “The other one brought them here,” Cole said. “He carved holes that hurt and changed them. They are not as I am. It isn’t your fault.”   
  
    Evelyn glanced back to Dorian, who waited silently.   
  
    “That’s one thing, at least. But you… are you…?”   
  
    Glass twisted, and Dorian smiled. Maybe it was the lack of material, but Evelyn didn’t think he looked sincere.   
  
    “He’s still with you,” Cole said. “He made a promise.”   
  
    Her face crumpled.   
  
    “Not the contract,” Cole amended quickly. “The contract is a means. ‘ _Best and only friend_ ’, that is his promise.”   
  
    She exhaled sharply and fixed Dorian with a severe look.   
  
    “If you were solid right now, I’d hug you,” she said. “I don’t care how allergic to saccharine stuff you say you are.”   
  
    He laughed, albeit silently and in a swirl of shards that looked like snow falling.   
  
    “He’d let you,” Cole said, earning a glower from the embarrassed devil. Unabashed, the boy said, “He would. _Best and only_.”   
  
    Her smile stretched, becoming thin and brittle.   
  
    “What happened to you?”   
  
    Normally, when Dorian tried to deflect, she watched his eyes. His words were his best disguise, but he was terrible at keeping it out of his eyes. Now, however, there was barely enough glass to give him form, and the pieces showed no details. Fortunately for Evelyn, she had Cole.   
  
    “His heart was broken,” said Cole, his voice halfway between mournful and wrathful.   
  
    Evelyn’s blood burned. Her fists clenched so tightly that the leather of her gauntlets creaked and her knuckles ached.  
  
    “They hurt you? We send them a warning in good faith, and they did this to you?” There was a storm in her voice, the promise of lightning to kiss dry grass and rain-starved trees.   
  
    “Words unsaid, held back too tight, until only silence and shards remain. They did harm, but they were not the ones to break his heart.”   
  
    It took her a moment to figure out what Cole meant by that, but when she did, her expression went desolate. The fire went out of her in an instant, her fight smothered in an avalanche of empathy.   
  
    “I’m so sorry,” she said, and there was not enough glass left for Dorian to bluff that he didn’t care.    
  
    “ _It was worse to hear him not say it than it was to not know_.” Cole said, once more voicing things the devil would have rather remained inside. “He thought it couldn’t be, but it was.”   
  
    Evelyn and Dorian regarded each other without speaking. Their conversation happened in head tilts, shoulder shifts, and lip twitches, and it happened faster than Cole could pick up on the individual strings of dialogue. Each subtle exchange seemed to weigh them down more and more, until it looked like Evelyn would also fracture from the stress.   
  
    “Evelyn?” Cassandra called out, coming up with her shield at the ready.   
  
    “It’s fine,” Evelyn said without taking her eyes from Dorian. “The Qunari didn’t take the news well.”   
  
    Cassandra stared at the half-missing figure of the devil rendered in glass pieces.   
  
    “To say the least. Is he… safe?”   
  
    “He’s Dorian, and that’s Cole. That’s all that matters right now.”   
  
    Cassandra frowned and lowered her shield.   
  
    “How do we proceed?”   
  
    A chill seeped into the cracks of Evelyn’s composure.   
  
    “Stop Corypheus, restore Order.” She turned and headed for her horse. “Dorian, Cole, with me. It’s time to end this.”   
  



	13. Crucible

    The Inquisition arrived to the sound of battle. The air was full of wings, metal and glass flashing among spells and blades.   
  
    Evelyn detachedly surveyed the violence, too weary of the age-old conflicts playing out again to feel anything anymore. Cassandra and Cullen stood beside her, Cole and Dorian at her back and the rest of her inner circle behind them.   
  
    “It appears you were correct,” Cassandra said to Cullen, who frowned.   
  
    “They look to be holding well enough. I guess they listened to the warning after all.”   
  
    “How gratifying,” said Evelyn in a tone that could have frozen the Waking Sea.   
  
    “If we press—” Cassandra started.   
  
    “No.” Evelyn said.   
  
    “No?” Cullen asked, turning to face her. “We marched all the way here to face Corypheus—”   
  
    “—And Corypheus isn’t here. These are just minions. I’m here to deal with Corypheus and his dragon.”   
  
    “The angels will take heavy losses,” Cassandra cautioned.   
  
    “No,” Evelyn said again.   
  
    Cassandra and Cullen exchanged looks, and she stepped back while he stepped forward and put a hand on Evelyn’s arm.   
  
    “Would you really condemn every angel here for what happened to Dorian?”   
  
    “No,” she whispered, gauntlets creaking as her hands clenched to fists and her eyes welled with tears. “But I am so tired of losing the people I care about to other peoples’ fights.”   
  
    “There is a job that must be done, and you are the one who must do it.” Cassandra said. “If you do not, then everyone will lose the people they care about. It is your fight.”   
  
    “I know.”   
  
    “Heavy, so heavy, the weight of the world, the quake of the loss,” said Cole. “Faith sundered, hope dim. _What Order can come from so much pain?_ ”   
  
    Dorian stepped up behind her. The magics practiced by the other mages of the Inquisition were not entirely like the devil’s glass arts, so there was little progress in mending the damage to his form. He was still held together mostly by sheer force of will, but there was enough of him that Evelyn could see the genuine concern on his features.   
  
    “You don’t have to join in if you’re not up to it,” she said, mostly for formality’s sake. Dorian answered her call from the edge of the Void; a little missing mass wasn’t about to keep him from his best friend’s side when the final battle was upon them.   
  
    He ran a quartz-dust hand through her hair with enough strength that it mussed the strands and gave her a prideful stare as if to laugh that she’d even said it aloud before swirling back to Cole’s side.   
  
    Evelyn blew out a long, uneven breath. She clasped Cullen’s hand briefly but tightly, and when she opened her eyes again she looked at the battlefield with the hard, haunted mien of the Inquisitor.   
  
    “Go.”   
  
  
    The Inquisition charged.   
  
    The Venatori broke before them like a window under siege, though it sickened Evelyn to look into the eyes of so many devils and see relief as they shattered. The Red Soldiers, too, seemed to revel in the release they could not seek in life. Corypheus’ control of his pawns was absolute.   
  
    In the midst of the fray, she found the Iron Bull. The angel’s wings were coated in blood and glass dust so that they glittered. He was in a similar condition, except the blood on his skin was his own.   
  
    Dead angels and devils lay around him in a ring. The carnage was such that she couldn’t tell who was cut down by who. It probably didn’t matter anymore. The Bull’s shoulders heaved, and he looked up at her with a dead eye on the edge of madness.   
  
    “Boss,” he grunted.   
  
    “Bull,” she said. Somehow her voice remained even.   
  
    “Dorian—”   
  
    “In that future—” she paused to viciously disembowel an interrupting soldier, “—he saw you die, and I saw his heart break. I thought he was so strong to keep going, but now I know: he could do it because if he came back, you’d be okay, and so would he.” She punctuated this statement by stabbing a rogue that tried to sneak up on her. She didn’t even bother to turn around to do it.   
  
    The Bull’s face twisted.   
  
    “I didn’t know,” he said, somehow managing to make it an admission instead of an excuse.   
  
    “I’m not the one you have to tell that to,” she said, perhaps more calmly than she felt. The Iron Bull read into her words as she knew he would. She let her eyes slide briefly across the field to where Dorian and Cole fought, a pair of diamonds flashing in the muck.   
  
    Dorians’ glass was too fragmented to make proper wings, and he still looked decidedly more inhuman than most everything else on the field, but he was more there than not, and the power that effortlessly flowed through him seemed to restore him even as it destroyed everything else.   
  
    Bull headed for Dorian almost without realizing it. He certainly didn’t notice the soldiers who tried to stand in his way, though they certainly noticed being cut down for their efforts. The devil caught sight of him before the angel was within hearing distance. A bolt of lightning struck almost indiscriminately, sparks showering the Bull’s metal.   
  
    “ _No, no, no!_ ” Cole moaned, appearing in the Bull’s path and nimbly dodging every attempt to remove him. “He doesn’t want to see an empty chest with cogs where the heart should be. He didn’t come back for you! _You didn’t give it back, so it’s over!_ ”   
  
    The Iron Bull would have ignored the boy, except his wording ignited memory and tangled his steps in his own thoughts. Dorian took the opportunity to do what he always did when faced with a problem he couldn’t immediately handle: he ran. The Bull moved to try and follow, but Cole suddenly seized his arm with surprising strength.   
  
    “You knew it was important, but not just how much,” he said. “They put you out here so you could die to serve them, and you let them because you thought you’d killed him. ”   
  
    The Bull blinked. Anger and appall curdled in his gut, but they felt distant and had yet to melt through shock to their full intensity.   
  
    “How did you know that?” He asked.   
  
    “He said there wouldn’t be a next time, but he didn’t think you’d both be alive to see one. He doesn’t dare to want it again. Next time— Oh no.”   
  
    Cole looked up as a shadow fell over the battlefield. The dragon had finally arrived.   
  
    Not too far away, Evelyn let out a blood-thirsty war-cry.   
  
    “Come on then! Come if you think you’re hard enough!”   
  
    “There’s no time,” Cole whispered, dropping the Bull’s arm and racing across the dead and the dust to Dorian’s side. “There’s never enough time!”   
  
    The Bull growled and thundered after him, intent on making time out of dragon teeth if necessary.   
  
      
    Dragon claws raked down shields. Dragon scales turned aside arrows and blades from all but the best archers and warriors. Dragon screams sent waves of dizzying confusion through all who heard. Dragon fire cut them down moments later.   
  
    The fight dragged on, but the Inquisition pressed harder. Evelyn was driven, hacking at the creature’s chest like she intended to carve its heart out by herself. Dorian, Cole, and the Iron Bull fell in with her, fighting together as smoothly as if they’d done it for years.   
  
    There was no time to talk. No time to clear up the questions left too long unasked. No time to say the things that should have been said.   
  
    Sometime after they settled into the perfect rhythm to put the beast down, the dragon inconsiderately decided to pull them all into range of its claws and teeth with a wind from its wings. The archers and the mages cursed the loudest for being dragged off their distant — and reasonably safer — ranged perches.   
  
    The Iron Bull stopped attacking the foreleg and saw Dorian; his glass-shard body risked falling apart entirely with every gust, and his shape blurred and faded so that, for one horrific moment, the angel thought he’d have to see the devil crumble again.   
  
    He dove forward and wrapped his wings around Dorian’s half-finished form, molding the metal to the memory of the devil’s body. Dorian thrashed, but the Bull knew how he moved, and the metal went with him, holding him together. There was a wordless warning, a musical scream in glass, but the Bull didn’t move.   
  
    Then the dragon flamed, and Cole screamed for both of them.   
  
    “ _You fool_ ,” he muttered, raw with grief and pain. “ _I was already on borrowed time._ ”   
  
    “ **Then borrow mine**.”  
  
  
    Evelyn pulled her sword from the dragon’s flank and turned to see the glow of lingering heat. There was a red-hot shape on the blackened ground, molten metal sitting almost egg-like in the ruins. Acid dread etched her insides.   
  
    “Dorian! Bull!”   
  
    No answer, not even from Cole.   
  
    “Keep your shield up!” Cullen hissed, stepping in to block the dragon’s thrashing tail. “Next time I might not be here to—”   
  
    The dragon kicked him. Its claws raked up under his breastplate and tore into the flesh underneath even as the momentum threw him away.   
  
    “Cullen!” Evelyn howled. She slammed her shield into the leg and finally shattered the joint. The dragon stumbled, and Cassandra charged up its back and over its neck to drive her sword into the base of its skull. The beast collapsed. The last thing it saw was the metal shape in front of it cracking open, hatching a figure of glass and grief held together by steel and spite.  
  
    Evelyn did not see the dreadful arrival. She skidded across the field to Cullen’s side and found him lying motionless. Too much of his blood soaked the ground around him. Cruel as the world was, there wasn’t even a breath left in him by the time she got there.   
  
    She would have sobbed if she could still feel anything, but there was simply too much loss.   
  
    All around her, her army, her people, her _friends_ were dying. Sera got caught a devil’s fiery web. Varric and his beloved crossbow lay crushed under a behemoth of a Red Soldier. Blackwall and Vivienne, whom she’d only just started to get to know, were caught by archers and rogues and fell before managing retaliation. Even Cassandra, indomitable, dragon-slaying Cassandra, was showing her fatigue.   
  
    And Cullen…   
  
    And Bull— And Dorian…   
  
    And _Cullen_ …  
  
    “It’s not over yet, my dear,” said Dorian. His voice, though achingly familiar, had a strange harmonic to it, and when she looked up she saw why. Dragon fire fused the quartz together and sealed the gaping holes in the devilish glass with angelic metal. The chords of his throat were steel, and their vibrations hummed through his whole body.   
  
    She choked on his name and looked back down at Cullen, trying not to resent her best friend for being made of more than flesh. His losses were burned into him just as clearly.   
  
    Cole knelt beside the fallen Commander and stared across his body to catch Evelyn’s eye.   
  
    “He believes in you,” the boy said softly, eliciting a gasp and a sob for his gentleness. “He wants you to keep fighting.”   
  
    “I’m afraid we’re not much of a party, but at least you have the basics covered,” Dorian said, and he held out a hand to help her rise. “Once we’re finished here, you and I will find some of that terrible Ferelden ale and get shit-faced with grief, but for now, we need to deal with _him_.”   
      
    He pointed to the dark figuring sweeping towards them. The dead were of little note to Corypheus; he stepped on angels, devils, and humans alike with no concern. Evelyn faced him numbly.   
  
    “In the beginning there was the Void, and Chaos ruled supreme,” Corypheus said. Evelyn groaned at the unfairness of a world where all of this tragedy happened and the architect of it still monologued like an amateur thespian. Corypheus, of course, paid no heed. “Then came the Titans, and they carved out the world and gave it shape and names, and were empowered by the Order they created. They made the Divine Mandate and paid for it in the blood of the Void.  
    “The Gods came next, building their golden Halls and weaving their magic, and they murdered the Titans and took the Mandate. Again, it is paid for in blood! When the corpses of the Titans rotted and blighted the land, the Gods locked their doors with their shame, but we saw and we remembered!  
    “We tore open their gates and gave the world the proof of their audacity. We bought their festering souls to stave off the withering of their people. We paid the blood cost then, and I pay it again here now! The Divine Mandate is mine, bought and paid!”   
  
    “You killed all these people and ruined all these lives, and you think that it’s some kind of payment?” Evelyn spat, bitter and dead. “They weren’t yours to bargain with. You’re a fraud, and a cheat, and a—!”   
  
    Someone cried out, but it wasn’t Evelyn. She suddenly lacked the air in her lungs to do it, probably because of the knife that appeared in her back. She managed to turn, past Dorian and Cole’s shocked faces, and saw…  
  
    “Solas?”   
  
    The elven mage stood there with blood on his hands and a grim expression on his face.   
  
    “The seed, he has the seed, black glass has his green soul!” Cole howled and leapt forward, but Solas blasted him away with fire and ice. Dorian caught her as she fell, but Evelyn didn’t seem to notice the change in position.   
  
    “I’m sorry, my friend,” Solas said, “but he made that deal long before you were ever even born.”   
  
    Cole reappeared and stabbed back at Solas on her behalf.   
  
    “No Gods, only monsters!” he hissed. “Doom and salvation entwined, but does it matter? No—”   
  
    Corypheus caught Cole by the face, clawed fingers digging into nearly translucent flesh. The boy thrashed briefly, but the light of the brand on his chest faded, and ultimately, so did his struggles.   
  
    Evelyn watched and wished she could do something other than drown in her own blood. Her dimming vision could see Dorian’s lips move, but she couldn’t hear him. The light in his glass was an eye-searing violet even to her failing sight, and it roiled through his glass and metal body like a storm front.    
  
    She felt a tremendous weight lift from her chest, and the lightness left behind almost felt like floating.  
  
    Dorian shook his head frantically. He seemed to be yelling, and for one moment, his whole being lit up like a lightning bolt frozen in mid-strike.   
  
    Evelyn lost herself in the brilliance,   
 

       in the way color faded to black and white,

            in the way sound muted, 

 

                in the way pain numbed,

 

                    in the way time

 

 

 

                        stopped.   
  
  



	14. Forfeit

    Evelyn expected death to be darker. Maybe with some extreme temperature, depending on the judgment of her life choices. Or at least some kind of scenery.   
      
    What she got was…  
      
        Nothing.   
  
    A whole lot of nothing.   
  
    The expanse of the void as far as the eye could see, in every direction…  
        except one.   
  
    Dorian was directly behind her, flesh restored and massive wings reconstructed again, this time from light rather than steel or quartz. The power there moved like a living entity in an array of colors that could only be seen in dreams.   
  
    In his hands, he held the glass amulet of their contract, which glowed so bright that it burned.   
  
    His expression was paradoxically remorseful, surprised, and elated at the same time, and suddenly Evelyn understood.   
  
    She smiled, and slowly, he smiled back.   
  
    “Next time?” She asked.   
  
    “Next time.”   
  



	15. Next Time

    After the destruction of the Temple of Sacred Ashes, Evelyn had… not flashes, but a funny feeling of familiarity that bubbled up from time to time. Except that wasn’t exactly it either. Sometimes it was the recognition, but other times she found herself looking for things that wouldn’t, or couldn’t, be there.  
  
    Like Cassandra: Evelyn felt she could trust the Seeker completely even when the other woman’s stormy glare and clipped words gave the impression she’d be just as happy to throw Evelyn into the deepest dungeon, were it not for her newfound ability to close Rifts.  
  
    Or Cullen: She felt she could, and possibly had, watched the Commander for ages. There was fragility to him that seemed new, however; a tension wound too taut to be healthy. She didn’t dare ask yet, and he didn’t offer.  
  
    It was worst with the Iron Bull, and she was only half-sure that it wasn’t because he dominated her social experience with Qunari. He seemed — and it felt ridiculous to even think the words — somehow smaller. Sometimes Evelyn’s gaze drifted to the his shoulders or back, expecting to see … well, she didn’t know what. Metal of some sort, maybe. Or she found herself staring at his tattoos and against all odds, expect them to move.  
  
    That didn’t clear up until she and her party followed the lead of a mysterious note into the Redcliffe Chantry. The anchor on her hand flared as they approached a Rift and saw a man in white robes attacking demons with nothing more than a staff. He felled the last two, turned around, and smiled.  
  
    “Good! You’re finally here! Now help me close this, would you?”  
  
    And suddenly, Evelyn just _knew_.  
  
  
    She watched the cautious initial banter as the newly introduced Dorian of House Pavus, most recently of Minrathous, and the Iron Bull interacted. There was no recognition in Dorian’s eyes, and he was as guarded as a Tevinter mage ought to be beyond the Imperium’s borders, but he also seemed very young. She wasn’t quite sure where she got that feeling, probably from the same place that made her look for glass behind his back, but it was… comforting.  
  
    Heartening.  
  
    And when she caught the glimmer of interest in the the Bull’s eye, all she could think was,  
  
    “It’s about time.”  


**Author's Note:**

> As an AU that follows a slightly different canon, there are several occasions where the dialogue is either adapted from or quoting the actual game for verisimilitude. Dragon Age: Inquisition, its characters, and original contents belong, of course, to its creators and legal owners, not me.


End file.
